Launch and Failure
Pioneer 0 was launched on Thor missile number 127 at 12:18:00 UTC on August 17, 1958 by the United States Air Force, only 4 minutes after the scheduled launch time. It was destroyed by an explosion of the first stage of the Thor booster, 73.6 seconds after lift-off at 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) altitude, 16 km downrange over the Atlantic Ocean. The failure was suspected to be due to a failing turbopump bearing, causing the liquid oxygen pump to stop. Erratic telemetry signals were received from the payload and upper stages for 123 seconds after the explosion, and the upper stages were tracked to impact in the ocean. The original plan was for the spacecraft to travel for 2.6 days to the Moon at which time a TX-8-6 solid propellant motor would fire to put it into a 29,000 kilometres (18,000 mi) lunar orbit which was to nominally last for about two weeks.
It was the only mission in the Pioneer program carried out by the United States Air Force, as subsequent missions were conducted by NASA.
Read more about this topic: Pioneer 0
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