That's not just any spacecraft, it's the Pioneer 10 -- an appropriate symbol for a club that helps its members surpass the limits of their earthbound existence.  From the day it was launched in 1972, the Pioneer's mission was to explore, learn, and communicate.  After 17 months in space, it passed by the planet Jupiter, where it obtained the first close-up images of the planet, charted Jupiter's intense radiation belts, located the planet's magnetic field, and discovered that Jupiter is predominantly a liquid planet.  And all of this it communicated clearly across half a billion miles to a receptive audience back on Earth.

The Pioneer left Jupiter with enough momentum to carry it beyond the orbit of Pluto and on out into the cosmos -- the first manmade object ever to leave the solar system.  Still it continued gathering information about cosmic rays and the solar wind in the outer reaches of the solar system.  And it continued communicating until 1997, when NASA declared its mission at an end and signaled it to power down its instruments.  It was then more than 6 billion miles from Earth.

But Pioneer still has one more message to communicate, which might not be delivered for thousands or hundreds of thousands of years.  Bolted to the spacecraft's main frame is a 6- by 9-inch gold anodized plaque, which bears the likeness of a man and a woman, a graphical representation of our solar system, and a simplified map that shows where our solar system is located relative to certain easily recognizable features of our galaxy.  The plaque was designed by the late physicist Carl Sagan, who realized that Pioneer would be drifting through the galaxy for many millennia and that it could eventually be intercepted by intelligent beings in some distant star system.  The plaque is a message to those unknown aliens, intended to inform them about the origin of this strange spacecraft and the nature of the beings who created it.

Now that's a true Pioneer -- going to any lengths to communicate to an audience!