85 research outputs found
Using Early Data to Illuminate the Pioneer Anomaly
Analysis of the radio tracking data from the Pioneer 10/11 spacecraft at
distances between about 20 - 70 AU from the Sun has consistently indicated the
presence of an unmodeled, small, constant, Doppler blue shift drift of order 6
\times 10^{-9} Hz/s. After accounting for systematics, this drift can be
interpreted as a constant acceleration of a_P= (8.74 \pm 1.33) \times 10^{-8}
cm/s^2 directed towards the Sun, or perhaps as a time acceleration of a_t =
(2.92 \pm 0.44)\times 10^{-18} s/s^2. Although it is suspected that there is a
systematic origin to this anomaly, none has been unambiguously demonstrated. We
review the current status of the anomaly, and then point out how the analysis
of early data, which was never analyzed in detail, could allow a more clear
understanding of the origin of the anomaly, be it a systematic or a
manifestation of unsuspected physics.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables, additional materia
The Pioneer Anomaly
Radio-metric Doppler tracking data received from the Pioneer 10 and 11
spacecraft from heliocentric distances of 20-70 AU has consistently indicated
the presence of a small, anomalous, blue-shifted frequency drift uniformly
changing with a rate of ~6 x 10^{-9} Hz/s. Ultimately, the drift was
interpreted as a constant sunward deceleration of each particular spacecraft at
the level of a_P = (8.74 +/- 1.33) x 10^{-10} m/s^2. This apparent violation of
the Newton's gravitational inverse-square law has become known as the Pioneer
anomaly; the nature of this anomaly remains unexplained. In this review, we
summarize the current knowledge of the physical properties of the anomaly and
the conditions that led to its detection and characterization. We review
various mechanisms proposed to explain the anomaly and discuss the current
state of efforts to determine its nature. A comprehensive new investigation of
the anomalous behavior of the two Pioneers has begun recently. The new efforts
rely on the much-extended set of radio-metric Doppler data for both spacecraft
in conjunction with the newly available complete record of their telemetry
files and a large archive of original project documentation. As the new study
is yet to report its findings, this review provides the necessary background
for the new results to appear in the near future. In particular, we provide a
significant amount of information on the design, operations and behavior of the
two Pioneers during their entire missions, including descriptions of various
data formats and techniques used for their navigation and radio-science data
analysis. As most of this information was recovered relatively recently, it was
not used in the previous studies of the Pioneer anomaly, but it is critical for
the new investigation.Comment: 165 pages, 40 figures, 16 tables; accepted for publication in Living
Reviews in Relativit
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