CAPE CANAVERAL—The Pioneer 10 spacecraft, a deep-space probe launched in 1972, was the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt and make direct observations of Jupiter. Recently, it became the first man-made object to leave the solar system and start an interstellar war because of the alleged pornography it carries on its side.

The spacecraft had traveled such a distance since its launch, that NASA’s Deep Space Network have not received a signal since 2002, and planned no additional contact attempts. NASA scientists believed the probe had breached the heliopause, the outer border of the solar system where solar winds form a rim much like the edge of a bubble.

But Pioneer 10 had done much more. Humanoid aliens from a previously unknown planet, Merth, claim that not only did Pioneer 10 survive a crash landing onto a schoolyard playground, but that it is also in direct violation of their stern Child Space Probe Protection Act (CSPPA), an act passed in 516 B.C. aimed to protect children from interstellar pornography. The humanoids have charged the United States with distributing interstellar pornography and have pledged to annihilate what their officials have dubbed as a nation that has “debilitating effects on communities, marriages, families, and children across the universe.”

The interstellar incongruity stems from a 6-by-9-inch gold-anodized aluminum plaque, which is attached to the spacecraft’s antenna support struts, designed to show scientifically educated inhabitants of some other star system where Pioneer was launched.
NASA scientists who designed the plaque believed the nude figures of man and woman would represent the type of creature that created Pioneer. They did not anticipate the reaction from the Merthlings, who apparently share the identical physical characteristics of Earthlings, but who have outlawed all expression of sexuality, including viewing etches made in gold-anodized aluminum plaques.

“We based the plaque on the assumption that if an alien society were technologically advanced enough to decipher it, then certainly they had gotten over hang-ups concerning nudity and sexuality,” said Ray Carvers, of NASA’s Deep Space Network.

Mas Truhgn, chief of the Merth’s Department of Justice, offered NASA officials his impression of the plaque from the bridge of his warship Maxi Pad. “What decrepit agenda you have for our universe, I cannot venture to guess, but if you have such the base morality to send images like this to where any child in the universe might view them, then you must be most depraved beings in the universe.” Truhgn is presently leading an armada of 25 space warships that are scheduled to reach Earth in the year 2024.

Merthlings have also outlawed physical “coupling,” and they raise their brood in-vitro, in large laboratories, NASA officials announced after translating space text messages from Maxi Pad.

“They appear to have legislated away their own natural sexual urge for reasons we do not at this time understand,” said NASA spokesperson Niles Foreman. “Possibly they continue to follow some ancient mythical text that forbids sexual union, or maybe they turned themselves into the machines that characterize their technologically advanced society. Mas Truhgn has not replied to our text message concerning these queries.”

Although NASA officials have pleaded to the Merthlings that they actually meant no ill will to the several hundred children who, after viewing the supposed pornographic image on the 6-by-9 plaque, had to be recycled, Truhgn claims the United States knew exactly what they were doing. “Would you go to a job interview without the nice dress? Would you be visiting the wedding day without the nice dress? Then how could you possibly think that it would be OK to present yourselves to an ancient alien culture without the nice dress? It is the absurd--you were addressing our prurient interests!”

Truhgn promised to sink most of North America into both oceans, and intelligence gathered information that he has text-messaged Canada, promising nearly 4,000 miles of prime beachfront property for an unknown fee. The Bush administration says it will make a statement concerning the situation after the upcoming Presidential elections, and Canadian authorities could not be reached for comment.