Pioneer 2

Pioneer 2
Artist's impression of the Pioneer-2 probe
Mission goal	Images of the lunar surface
Client	NASA
Launcher	Thor Able
Course of the mission
Start date	November 8, 1958, 07:30 UTC
launch pad	CCAFS , LC-17
End date	November 8, 1958
11/08/1958 begin 11/08/1958 It burns up when it enters the earth's atmosphere

Pioneer 2 was a space probe from the US space agency NASA as part of the Pioneer program.

Like its two predecessors, Pioneer 0 and Pioneer 1 , the device should pivot into a lunar orbit and transmit television images of the lunar surface.

At that time, the flight maneuver did not provide for a previous parking path around the earth .

construction

Pioneer 2 was spin stabilized and consisted of a cylinder section 74 cm in diameter and adjoining shallow truncated cones with a total height of 76 cm. The drive, a solid propellant with 105 N thrust, was mounted on one side, the attitude control and antennas opposite. The payload accounted for 15.6 kg of the total mass of 39.5 kg, including a low-resolution camera, magnetometer, radiation measuring devices and a microphone system for the detection of impacts in the satellite. The power supply came from three different battery systems.

mission

After the successful start, the engines of the 2nd stage switched off too early. The third stage did not ignite due to a malfunction. So the space probe could not leave the gravitational field of the earth. Instead, it only reached a summit height of around 1,550 kilometers and burned up after 45 minutes in the earth's atmosphere. However, the experiments were able to collect a small amount of data about the Earth's outer radiation belt and the frequency of micrometeorites .

Web links

Commons : Pioneer (space probe program)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Pioneer 2 in the NSSDCA Master Catalog (English)
• Description of the Pioneer 2 mission on jpl.gov (English)
• Bernd Leitenberger: The Pioneer Program