Pioneer 10, the first NASA mission to the outer planets, was launched on March 2, 1972, from Launch Complex 36A at Cape Canaveral. It garnered a series of firsts perhaps unmatched by any other robotic spacecraft in the space era: the first vehicle placed on a trajectory to escape the solar system into interstellar space, the first spacecraft to fly beyond Mars, the first to fly through the asteroid belt, the first to fly past Jupiter, the first to use all-nuclear electrical power, and the first

673K views · 28K reactions | December 14th - on this day in 1972,...

🚀... - NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration