— Ch. 1 · Origins And Naming —
Pioneer program.
~4 min read · Ch. 1 of 6
Stephen A. Saliga sat in a briefing room at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base during the late 1950s. He served as chief designer for Air Force exhibits within the Air Force Orientation Group. Engineers described a spacecraft to him as a lunar-orbiting vehicle with an infrared scanning device. Saliga found that title too long and lacking theme for his exhibit design work. The Army had already launched and orbited the Explorer satellite around that time. Their Public Information Office identified the Army as Pioneers in Space. Saliga suggested Pioneer as the name of the probe instead. By adopting this new name, the Air Force would make a quantum jump regarding who really were the pioneers in space.
Early Lunar Attempts
The first launch attempt occurred on the 17th of August 1958 under the designation Pioneer 0. This Thor-Able rocket failed just 77 seconds after liftoff and destroyed the payload. A second attempt followed on the 11th of October 1958 known as Pioneer 1. It missed the Moon due to a partial failure of its third stage. the 8th of November 1958 brought another failure when Pioneer 2 reentered Earth's atmosphere before reaching orbit. the 24th of September 1959 saw Pioneer P-1 lost entirely because the launch vehicle failed immediately. Another mission named Pioneer P-3 failed shortly after launching on the 26th of November 1959. the 6th of December 1958 marked the flight of Pioneer 3 which achieved lunar flyby status but missed the Moon due to launcher issues. the 3rd of March 1959 launched Pioneer 4 successfully achieving Earth escape velocity for a lunar flyby. The final early attempts included Pioneer P-30 failing to achieve lunar orbit on the 25th of September 1960. Pioneer P-31 was lost in an upper stage failure on the 15th of December 1960.Interplanetary Weather Network
Pioneer 6 launched into space during December 1965 as part of a new interplanetary weather network. This probe entered a solar orbit with 0.8 AU distance from the Sun. Its orbital period became slightly shorter than that of Earth itself. Pioneer 7 followed in August 1966 and reached a solar orbit at 1.1 AU distance. That longer orbital period meant it moved slower than our planet around the star. Pioneer 8 launched in December 1967 while Pioneer 9 arrived in November 1968. These four spacecraft formed a distributed monitoring system across the inner Solar System. From time to time they faced sides of the Sun invisible to ground-based observatories on Earth. They could sense parts of the Sun several days before its rotation revealed them to Earth orbiting instruments. Pioneer 9 remained active until 1983 when operations ceased permanently. Pioneer E suffered a launcher failure in August 1969 before reaching its destination.