Pioneer's Passage

On its way to a December rendezvous with Jupiter, the unmanned spacecraft Pioneer 10 last week finished the 210-day leg of its journey that took it through the asteroid belt. Pioneer. which was launched in March 1972, thus became the first vehicle from earth to pass safely through the vast ring of rocky debris that circles the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The relatively uneventful, 200 million-mile passage removed a major concern of both science-fiction writers and scientists: that spacecraft in the asteroid belt would be damaged and perhaps destroyed by flying rocks.

Scientists from NASA'S Ames Research Center reported that the 570-lb., saucer-shaped ship was hit no more than once a day even in the most dense part of the belt, which consists mostly of tiny particles, rather than the chunky rocks that peril science-fiction space travelers. None of the impacts were made by fragments larger than a grain of sand, and none did any detectable damage to the thinly shielded $50 million craft. By carefully planning Pioneer's trajectory, controllers kept the ship at least 4,000,000 miles from those larger (at least seven miles in diameter) and rarer asteroids that can be seen by telescope on earth. Said NASA's newly confident Dr. William Kinard: "We're firmly convinced that the asteroid belt presents little hazard for future spacecraft going to explore the outer planets."

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