On this day in space! Dec. 12, 1967: Pioneer 8 launches on mission to study the sun

On Dec. 12, 1967, NASA launched the Pioneer 8 spacecraft on a mission to study the sun.

Pioneer 8 was the third in a series of solar-orbiting satellites that NASA launched to observe things like the solar wind, the sun's magnetic fields and cosmic rays, or high-energy particles from outside the solar system. The Pioneer missions provided the world's first network of satellites that could monitor space weather and solar storms, which can cause amazing auroras on Earth, but can also cause some problems.

A black and white drawing of a cylindrical satellite with antennae sticking out of the sides floating in space. — A drawing of the Pioneer probe (Image credit: NASA Technical Reports Server, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.

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