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 The Pioneer data exists on a few hundred ancient 7- and 9-track magnetic tapes, which can only be read on "antique" outdated computers.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

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Thanks ljk4-1 for your interesting contribution. And edstrick too

To analyse the existing set of data is obviously the first thing to do before building a space probe to investigate a gaz leak on Pioneer.
-Is the effect real?
-Is it constant, or depending on distance, attitude, fuel aging, direction, planet neighbouring, distance from the ecliptic?
All this would give us clues about its nature: gravitation, electromagnetic, solar wind, local reaction...

By the way it is said that the computers able to read the Pioneer data are to be scraped by the NASA. The first thing to do is obviously to save the data on modern supports. New domain for archaeology: rumaging in old computers magnetic bands.

edstrick, I never heard that the word "anomaly" bears a capital letter, in any of its uses. The Pioneer anomaly may have a very extraordinary explanation, for instance that the probe was followed by a spaceship from another civilization, or that it was used by yogis to demonstrate their supernatural powers. Simply such kind of explanations can be envisioned only after all the other explanations failed. More likely the Pioneer anomaly bears the possibility of some fundamental discovery in physics or in astronomy, so it is worth the study. But there are many chances that we simply find a gaz leak, thruster malfunction or something trite in this style.

But of course I did not missed your point about ANOMALIES! I am no more interested than you by people who spread false informations and false theories: they only muddle things. If there is somewhere something really unexplained, they may rather spoil the discovery than encourage its study.