Pioneer 10 Status Report 05-23-2001

A note from Pioneer 10: FLOP to FLIP

The command counter toggles as the Pioneer 10 spacecraft received
our No-Op command sent up on Friday 18 May and noted on the successful
down link Saturday 19 May.

No more tracks scheduled at the moment and probably no more high
power up links from Station 63 in Spain. Finding round-trip light
time, back-to-back tracks is not easy with all of today’s needs for
the Deep Space Network tracking time. We may have to see if a low
power-up link will do the trick and find tracking time nearer to home.

The Osprey PC emulator for the PDP computer worked as advertised and
a command file was sent to the station. There it was used to
modulate the 200 KW signal that beamed its way to PN10 with no
problem. My thanks to Al Morgan of Strobe Data in Redmond
Washington, for the use of the Osprey.

The command system now consists of bits and pieces from several
computers as well as the PC. Not a pretty sight to see, but worked.

Strobe Data was born in the same year Pioneer 10 was launched, 1972.
Like some of you who remember vacuum tubes, they have been watching
the spacecraft that could. We have a Mac Quadra 950 to show
engineering data from the down link telemetry and I put two updated
snaps from Saturdays track on the home site.

http://home.mindspring.com/~larrykellogg/_wsn/page2.html

Larry R. Kellogg

lkellogg@mail.arc.nasa.gov