Pioneer 10 and 11 interstellar studies

Abstract

The Pioneer 10 spacecraft may soon be the first man-made object to leave our solar system and penetrate the heliospheric boundary into interstellar space. Scientific investigators on this mission eagerly anticipate the opportunity to measure the physical processes occurring in the terminal boundary region and in the unexplored space known as the interstellar medium by astronomers who have studied it remotely with telescopes for many years. This paper is a descriptive overview of the Pioneer 10 mission and the dominant physical processes that have been discovered since its 1972 launch into our heliosphere and those processes that we expect to see at the boundary and in the interstellar medium.