The Pioneer Anomaly Options

[remcook]

http://www.planetary.org/news/2005/pioneer_anomaly_faq.html

The planetary society may be checking it out...

The Planetary Society has committed to raise the funds to preserve the priceless Pioneer data from destruction.


After years of analysis, but without a final conclusion, NASA, astonishingly, gave up trying to solve the "Pioneer Anomaly" and provided no funds to analyze the data. The Pioneer data exists on a few hundred ancient 7- and 9-track magnetic tapes, which can only be read on "antique" outdated computers. The agency is going to scrap, literally demolish, the only computers able to access and process that data in the next few months!

[edstrick]

I'd have to check, but I think the Apollo 17 instrument's name included the term "Tidal". They were looking at freequencies below those the seismometer would detect, at least in part... looking for whole-moon "ringing" frequencies, like the ringing of the whole earth after a Richter 8+ quake.

The instrument failed because it was balanced in 1 G with the aid of a loading mass or spring which was unloaded on the moon. The problem was an arithmetic booboo in the calculation of the design for lunar gravity.. the instrument had a "bias" range that was adjustable for a range of lunar gravities, or really more accurately, for a range of instrument sensitivities... The adjustable range of the instrument was such that actual lunar gravity (very well known) was outside the adjustment range. This is similar to the focus failure on Deep Impact's hi rez camera.. The camera was "focussed" from pre-launch out of focus conditions by heating the carbon-composite truss to drive out water vapor in vaccuum, intending to slow down and stop when the instrument approached and achieved perfect focus..... it never got there due to a ground base calibration problem. The actual focus point was outside of the adjustment range.

[Bob Shaw]

The instrument failed because it was balanced in 1 G with the aid of a loading mass or spring which was unloaded on the moon.  The problem was an arithmetic booboo in the calculation of the design for lunar gravity.. the instrument had a "bias" range that was adjustable for a range of lunar gravities, or really more accurately, for a range of instrument sensitivities... The adjustable range of the instrument was such that actual lunar gravity (very well known) was outside the adjustment range.  This is similar to the focus failure on Deep Impact's hi rez camera.. The camera was "focussed" from pre-launch out of focus conditions by heating the carbon-composite truss to drive out water vapor in vaccuum, intending to slow down and stop when the instrument approached and achieved perfect focus..... it never got there due to a ground base calibration problem.  The actual focus point was outside of the adjustment range.

Oooh, dear! Don't let a certain scientist-astronaut know, this may have wasted some of that precious EVA time during which rocks could have been examined. I can just imagine a series of unexplained murders, with the victims attended to with a balance spring tied between a gnomon and a lunar rake...