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
Jupiter dark brown. A torus of ionized atoms was discovered along Io's orbital path, and volcanoes were found on the moon's surface, some in the process of erupting. As the spacecraft passed behind the planet, it observed flashes of lightning in the night side atmosphere. The next mission to encounter Jupiter was the "Ulysses" solar probe. It performed a flyby maneuver to attain a polar orbit around the Sun. During this pass, the spacecraft conducted studies on Jupiter's magnetosphere. "Ulysses" has no cameras so no images were taken. A second flyby six years later was at a much greater distance. In