Pioneer 10 and female along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft. The plaque is attached to the antenna support struts to provide some shielding from interstellar dust. In the film "", a Klingon ship destroys "Pioneer 10" as target practice. In the internet multimedia fiction project "17776", a sentient "Pioneer 10" is one of the main characters. Pioneer 10 Pioneer 10 (originally designated Pioneer F) is an American space probe, launched in 1972 and weighing , that completed the first mission to the planet Jupiter. Thereafter, "Pioneer 10" became the first of five
Planetary flyby Planetary flyby A planetary flyby is the act of sending a space probe past a planet or a dwarf planet close enough to record scientific data. This is a subset of the overall concept of a flyby in spaceflight. Flybys commonly use gravity assists to "slingshot" a space probe on its journey to its primary objective, but may themselves be used as primary means. The first flyby of another planet with a functioning spacecraft took place on December 14, 1962, when Mariner 2 zoomed by the planet Venus. "New Horizons" performed flyby maneuvers of Jupiter, Pluto and its moons in