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 The Pioneer data exists on a few hundred ancient 7- and 9-track magnetic tapes, which can only be read on "antique" outdated computers.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

[djellison]

Damn good point actually UG - hadnt thought of that.

Then again, they're planning a yearly checkout iirc though - and that may involved pitching/rolling/yawing the spacecraft to look at astronomical calibration targets, which would trash the effect wouldnt it?

activities during the approximately 8-year cruise to Pluto include annual spacecraft and instrument checkouts, trajectory corrections, instrument calibrations and Pluto encounter rehearsals.

Doug

[ugordan]

Then again, they're planning a yearly checkout iirc though - and that may involved pitching/rolling/yawing the spacecraft to look at astronomical calibration targets, which would trash the effect wouldnt it?

I don't think it would trash the effect. At least much. They'll still have periods of inertial coast in between and still see if the modelled-out Doppler plots fit with the observed segments. A residual should still be detectable, though it won't take time do reach a big, nice and well-detectable magnitude before another "trashing" period. Then again, the s/c will probably have more stable RF oscillators so the balance could still hold.
On the other side, I vaguely *seem* to remember reading somewhere that NH actually won't be a good tool to measure the acceleration, I forget why.
Might have been something with the ultrastable oscillators thing.
Might have been a pigment of my imagination...

[NMRguy]

Yes, we spin most of cruise, stopping only rarely. It costs fuel that we want to hoard for encounters and KBO DeltaV. And yes, our radio science team hopes to look for
the Pioneer anaomaly. Contact Len Tyler or Ivan Linscott at Stanford.

-Alan

Alan addressed this back in Feb 05 in the "New Horizons, Pluto and the Kuiper belt" page. It seems like he plans to take full advantage of this opportunity.