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A status report on all deep space probes
"Planetary probes have a specific mission: to explore the surface or vicinity of a planet in the Solar System. Not surprisingly, Mars remains the most popular target. Other deep space probes explore the Sun, other planets, or are on their way out of the Solar System.
"Even as you read this, there are several man-made probes serving as our remote eyes throughout the Solar System. Some perform useful and valuable observations on a daily basis, such as the Solar and Heliocentric Observatory, monitoring the Sun 24 hours a day. Others are living relics from the dawn of space exploration, including the longest-living space probe ever made, NASA's Pioneer 6. Well, maybe this isn't exactly Arthur C. Clarke's vision of the year 2001, with a nuclear-powered manned spaceship en route towards Jupiter, but we are getting there... at least some of our faithful remote outposts are out there already, as a first step towards what I hope will be our eventual conquest of the Solar System and beyond.
"These pages provide summary information on all "live" probes that operate away from the immediate vicinity of the Earth. In other words, probes that are either going somewhere, or are "looking up", not down.
"Please note that this 'portal' is the result of the efforts of one person who's not in any way associated with the space agencies whose missions are featured here. One consequence is that the information is not always up-to-date. For instance, the 'Last reported contact' field contains information about the last contact I heard about (from an e-mail newsletter, a visit to the probe's Web site, etc.) and if it shows a date months in the past, that doesn't necessarily mean that the probe has not been heard from by its operators in the intervening time!"
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