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The probe would have been constructed from flight-qualified spare components intended for the Pioneer F and G probes (designated Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 after launch) by NASA contractor TRW . As planning for the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions progressed, mission scientists found themselves desiring a third probe. They proposed a 1974 launch, using a spacecraft assembled from the unused spare parts. The mission would take the craft to Jupiter , where it would use the gas giant as a Gravitational Slingshot to travel outside the Ecliptic . However, NASA management did not approve the mission, and it was never launched. In 1981, the US spacecraft for an International Solar Polar Mission was cancelled. In 1990, the Ulysses spacecraft was built by the European Space Agency with the instruments split between '''ESA''' and NASA for this Out-Of-The-Ecliptic (OOE) mission -- first proposed by the Pioneer 10/11 principal investigators 20 years earlier. CURRENT LOCATION The spacecraft that would be Pioneer H hangs in the Milestones of Flight Gallery at the National Air And Space Museum in Washington, D.C. , serving as a stand-in for the Pioneer 10 probe. While described in official Smithsonian records as a "replica", the spacecraft was considered fully-functional by Pioneer mission planners. Mark Wolverton quotes James Van Allen in ''The Depths of Space'': :"We mounted an intensive campaign to launch the flight-worthy spare spacecraft and its instrument complement on a low-cost, out-of-ecliptic mission via a high-inclination flyby of Jupiter. However, our case fell on deaf ears at NASA headquarters, and the spare spacecraft now hangs in the main gallery of the National Air and Space Museum, at 1 AU and zero ecliptic latitude." SOURCES
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