![Pioneer 10/11 Mission Patch](https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/902/2016/08/2016fall-talk-back-pioneer.440-198x198.jpg)
Talkback for Fall 2016
Another close encounter with outer space
Fifty years ago, 1966, I graduated from WSU and then went to work for NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California. I spent the next 40 years exploring our solar system. WSU gave me the “right stuff” to be a part of sending a “spacecraft where no spacecraft had gone before.” I was in the Pioneer Project and we sent the first spacecraft to the outer planets, Pioneer-10, to fly beyond the orbit of Mars through the asteroid belt and encounter Jupiter in 1973. After the flyby of Jupiter, Pioneer-10, on an escape trajectory from the Sun … » More …