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Some information taken from here.
In the news today is an item about a space probe, Pioneer 10, that the Deep Space Network can no longer hear. The surprising part is not that the DSN can no longer hear Pioneer 10. The surprising part is that it could be heard at all for long. Pioneer 10's mission was a fly-by of Jupiter. There were unknowns. Would the craft even survive the asteroid belt? Would it survive the radiation surrounding Jupiter? In case things didn't go right, another probe would come a bit later - Pioneer 11. An entire other probe as a backup.
There are a few interesting things about Pioneers 10 and 11. They came late in a series. There was experience with earlier versions from which knowledge of how to do better had been gained, though the nature of the series changed several times. Pioneer was more a set of series than a single thing itself. And those pictures, sent back by the Pioneer probes? Consider this: There was no camera as such aboard them. So the images had to come from somewhere. And they did. There was a light measuring device aboard which could, with the spacecraft's spin, be swept across a field. The pictures were built up from this. And the design life: 2.5 years. It lasted rather longer.
The history of the Pioneer program shows something. Failure. The first few of the series had problems with launch and such. While some of the early Pioneers did send some data back, it could be argued that the first four (including a 'Pioneer 0') failed. Four failures in a row. But the fifth one worked. And so did the sixth, and so on. Something to consider the next time a probe is blown up on launch, or misses its target, or is lost, or fails to work perfectly. Four failures in a row - and then a string of successes, save for 'Pioneer E' which came between 9 and 10. I'd say the folks who designed, built, tested, launched, operated, and analyzed the Pioneers did a damn good job. A job they could do because they were allowed to learn from and prevent mistakes and disasters. It could have been stopped after those early annoying, embarrassing failures. But fortunately it wasn't. That would have been the worst failure of all.
