Wikipedia:Peer review/Pioneer 10/archive1

Pioneer 10

This peer review discussion has been closed.
This is an article about a historically important unmanned spacecraft that set several key precedents, including being the first mission to an outer planet (Jupiter), the first to pass through the asteroid belt, and the first to achieve escape velocity from the Solar System. I've listed this article for peer review because I've worked to expand and cite the content, to the point where I think it is no longer a C-class article. Please let me know what you think needs to be done to further improve the article and get it up to a GA level or even satisfy the FA criteria.

Unfortunately I can't do anything about the poor image scanning quality at present.

Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:02, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Finetooth comments: Thanks for your work on this interesting article. I have no particular expertise in space travel, but I'm able to advise on Manual of Style issues and to make general observations.

• All the illustrations should have captions.

Lead

• "is a 258-kilogram robotic space probe" - Normally quantities like this are also given in imperial units. I like using the {{convert}} template, which does the spelling and abbreviations automatically; e.g., 258-kilogram (569 lb). The adj=on parameter adds the hyphen. Ditto for the other metric quantities, including temperatures, in the article.
  • I think WP:UNITS applies here. Most publications use either SI or cgs when discussing the spacecraft. RJH (talk)

• "NASA Ames Research Center" - NASA might not need to be spelled out (though I'd be inclined to spell it out on the first use), but I'd add ARC in parentheses so that its use elsewhere as an acronym makes sense to everyone; i.e., "NASA Ames Research Center (ARC)".
  • ARC is not used. RJH (talk)

• A brief explanation of "bus" might be helpful to readers. Perhaps a link to an explanation would be OK if you can find one that's appropriate.

• "Following a launch on March 2, 1972, it became the first spacecraft to traverse the asteroid belt between July 15, 1972 and February 15, 1973." - I'd replace "it" with "Pioneer 10" for clarity, but I'd also recast the sentence to avoid ambiguity. Maybe: "Pioneer 10 was launched on March 2, 1972. Between July 15, 1972, and February 15, 1973, it became the first spacecraft to traverse the asteroid belt."

• "Asteroid belt" should only be linked on the first instance.

• "Because of power constraints and the vast distance of the probe from Earth (12 billion-kilometers (80 AU) as of January 2003)," - Nested parentheses are best avoided. The conversion of 12 billion kilometers will create another pair. Find a way to recast the sentence to eliminate nesting, if you can.

History

• "These were be launched in 1972 and 1973 during favorable windows that occurred only a few weeks every thirteen months." - Word missing, "were to be launched"? Also, numbers bigger than nine are usually presented as digits; i.e., 13 months.

• "Launch during other time intervals would be more costly" - "Would have been" rather than "would be" since this is all in the past.

• "later they would be named" - "Were named".

• "Yielding to multiple proposals" - Maybe "based on" or "melding" rather than "yielding to"?

• The Manual of Style recommends using straight prose where feasible rather than using bulleted lists. WP:MOS#Bulleted and numbered lists. The two lists in this section could easily become part of prose paragraphs.

• "the effect the environmental radiation surrounding Jupiter would have to the instruments" - "on the instruments" rather than "to the instruments"?

• "The TRW team that assembled the spacecraft were led by B. J. O'Brien and Herb Lassen." - It's usually better to use active voice when a sentence like this is easy to flip; i.e., "B. J. O'Brien and Herb Lassen led the TRW team that assembled the spacecraft."

• "an estimated 25 million man-hours" - "Person-hours" would be gender-neutral.

• "Heat is generated by the dissipation of 70–120 W" - I would write this one out as "70 to 100 watts".

• The many short subsections in this section make the article look choppy and don't leave enough room for the illustrations. Images are best placed entirely inside the sections they illustrate and ideally do not overlap section boundaries or displace edit buttons. I'd suggest looking for ways to merge some of the subsections to make larger subsections into which the illustrations fit neatly.

Power

• "Pioneer 10 used 4 SNAP-19 radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG) (see diagram)." - Wikipedia normally avoids using imperatives like "see diagram". I would delete this one.

Computer

• "A data storage unit was included to record up to 6,144-bytes" - No hyphen needed.

• "The digital telemetry unit would then be used" - "Was" rather than "would then be".

Spacecraft design

• "The Pioneer 10 bus measures 36-centimeters deep and with six 76-centimeters long panels forming the hexagonal structure." - "With" is awkward. Maybe "The Pioneer 10 bus measures 36-centimeters deep and has six panels, each 76 centimeters long, that form a hexagonal structure." You'll need to add the imperial conversions too.

Scientific instruments

• This subsection has big problems. The list should be turned into prose. Not all of the illustrations will fit nicely in this small a space. The remaining illustrations will need captions. Links to external sites from within the article are a no-no; use inline citations instead. The extra bolding is a problem. WP:MOSBOLD suggests using italics for emphasis, if necessary.

Mission profile

• I might move this section to the very end.

Encounter with Jupiter

• "the vehicle would cross the bow shock" - "Crossed" rather than "would cross".

• Too many images in too little space. I'd recommend trimming the collection here to perhaps the two or three that best illustrate the points made in the text.

Loss of signal

• The tags in this section will need to be addressed.

References

• I didn't check all of the citations, but here's a short list of small problems. In general, citations to web sites need author, title, publisher, date of publication, URL, and date of most recent access if all of these are known or can be found.

• Citation 1 appears to have an invalid ISBN. Also, even when a source uses all caps in a title (PIONEER ODYSSEY), Wikipedia house style is to change it to title case; i.e., Pioneer Odyssey.

• Citation 4 and 40: p. rather than pp.

• Citation 32, 33, 37 and maybe others: Use the same date formatting throughout the ref section. This guideline applies to the publication dates as well as the access dates.

• Citation 60: broken

• Citation 57: needs a page number.

• Citation 26 needs a publication date.

Bibliography

• Book entries should include the place of publication. You can usually find this information via WorldCat if you don't have it in your notes.

• ISBNs should include the hyphens. A handy converter lives here.
  • This convention doesn't appear to be established in the MoS and it is widely not followed. RJH (talk)

• Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

I hope these suggestions prove helpful. If so, please consider commenting on any other article at WP:PR. I don't usually watch the PR archives or make follow-up comments. If my suggestions are unclear, please ping me on my talk page. Finetooth (talk) 18:10, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the in-depth review, Finetooth. This will be very helpful. Regards, RJH (talk) 21:56, 16 September 2011 (UTC)