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
Exploration of Jupiter probe, en route to Pluto, flew by Jupiter for a gravity assist and was the first probe launched directly towards Jupiter since the "Ulysses" in 1990. Its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) took its first photographs of Jupiter on September 4, 2006. The spacecraft began further study of the Jovian system in December 2006, and made its closest approach on February 28, 2007. Although close to Jupiter, "New Horizons" instruments made refined measurements of the orbits of Jupiter's inner moons, particularly Amalthea. The probe's cameras measured volcanoes on Io, studied all four Galilean moons in detail, and made long-distance studies