We're all busy with our Carl Walz preparations, but there's another milestone in space epxloration that everyone should know about. Saturday marked the 30th anniversary of the launch of Pioneer 10, the very first deep space probe NASA ever launched. Sent to study the outer planets of the solar system, it included a plaque attached to the vehicle intended to give a depiction of Earth and its inhabitants should any extraterrestrial life chance upon it as it travels of toward the star Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus.

NASA engineers attempted to contact it over the weekend and were successful, despite Pioneer being over 7.4 billion miles away. That's twice the distance the Earth is away from Pluto, the furthermost planet in our solar system. The message took over 22 hours round trip!