Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt and reach the outer solar system, flying past Jupiter at a distance of about 81,000 miles from the earth. During its Jupiter encounter, Pioneer 10 imaged the planet and its moons, and took measurements of Jupiter's magnetosphere, radiation belts, magnetic field, and atmosphere. (Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to fly past Jupiter.) These measurements of the intense radiation environment near Jupiter were crucial in designing the Voyager and Galileo spacecraft.

After flying by Jupiter, Pioneer 10 headed out of the solar system in the direction opposite to the Sun's motion through the Milky Way galaxy. It will take another 2 million years for Pioneer 10 to reach the first star on its trajectory. Pioneer 10 carries a plaque intended to communicate something about its home planet should the spacecraft ever meet up with another intelligent species. Routine tracking of Pioneer 10 ended in 1997, but the spacecraft continued to send out signals until January 2003.

Astronautics faculty Prof. Darrell Judge led designing and building the spacecraft instrument measuring ultraviolet radiation in space, and  Professors Don Shemansky and Mike Gruntman studied properties of the interstellar gas inflowing into the solar system.

On board each of spacecraft Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 is a plaque with a pictorial message from mankind. The plaque shows the figures of a man a woman, the transition of a hydrogen atom, and the location of the Sun and Earth in the galaxy. It serves as a kind of interstellar "message in a bottle".

Pioneer 10 moving on!