Pioneer program

The Pioneer programme was a series of American robotic space missions begun in the late 1950s, the early years of the space race, and continued until the end of the century. The first probes were attempts to reach the Moon. The most famous were Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11: Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to cross the asteroid belt and fly past Jupiter, and Pioneer 11 followed it to Jupiter and was the first to visit Saturn. Both carried a plaque designed by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake with a message for any extraterrestrial finders, and both left the solar system. Later Pioneer missions, including Pioneer Venus, studied the planet Venus and the Sun.

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