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 The Pioneer data exists on a few hundred ancient 7- and 9-track magnetic tapes, which can only be read on "antique" outdated computers.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]

ljk4-1: "...The Pioneer Explorer Collaboration -- Investigation of the Pioneer Anomaly at ISSI.."

I totally concur with the proposed analysis. We have an "anomaly". Not an "Anomaly" or an "ANOMALY" (if you get what I mean...).

We have an APPARENT force acting on the spacecraft. The best modelling has been unable to explain this anomaly in terms of systematic internally generated forces on the spacecraft, or known, modelable external forces acting on the spacecraft. We now need to extract the most information possible from the mission's data to see how the force varies with 1.) mission phase, 2.) radial location in solar system, and 3.) azimuth/inclination in solar system.

For example, if a reanalysis shows no anomalous acceleration before Jupiter flyby and identical accelerations afterwards... that would suggest an effect arising in an unknown effect on the spacecraft of the Jovian system environment..... particularly the extreme radiation environment.

For another example...Pioneer 11 flew "across" the solar system in a significantly inclined orbit between the Jupiter encounter and it's Saturn encounter, getting a foretaste of out-of-ecliptic science before Ulysses. If a reanalysis shows a force varying with inclination or angle around the sun in the ecliptic and then a relatively constant force after Saturn flyby puts Pioneer 11 on an escape trajectory...... Hmmmmmm.....!