The Pioneer Anomaly
The Pioneer 10/11 spacecraft yielded the most precise navigation in deep space to date. However, their radiometric tracking data received from the distances between20–70 astronomical units from the Sun has consistently indicated the presence of a small, anomalous, Doppler frequency drift. The drift is a blue frequency shift that can be interpreted as very small sunward acceleration for each spacecraft. This signal has become known as the Pioneer anomaly. In this talk, we will review some of the mechanisms proposed to explain the Pioneer anomaly and will focus on its recent investigation.
In this context, we will discuss our efforts to assemble the largest possible historic set of the Pioneer 10 and 11 radiometric Doppler data needed for the thorough investigation. These efforts resulted in a significant gain of the available Pioneer Doppler data, which became the primary source for our investigation of physical properties of the anomaly. We will also report on the recovery of spacecraft telemetry data that allowed reconstructing the engineering history of spacecraft. We will discuss the results obtained with our finite-element thermal model that was developed specifically for the Pioneer vehicles. This model was used to investigate the thermal nature of the puzzling effect using these telemetry files in conjunction with the analysis of the much extended Pioneer Doppler data. Finally, we will summarize the results of our investigation of the physical origin of the Pioneer anomaly.
Art-Science Think Tank: Wednesday, June 13