3 ms·

Is there any intention to use New Horizons to test the "Pioneer Anomaly"? Seems like a good candidate, as its moving in the right direction.

FeatureRush 12y ago
Pioneer Anomaly was solved in 2012, once the thermal recoil force is properly accounted for, no anomalous acceleration remains.
- hga 12y ago
  Well, confirmation with another probe would be nice, and the New Horizons has an instrument (obviously included before the thermal solution) if NASA so chooses to perform the experiment. Will no doubt depend in part if they can find another object to examine beyond Pluto.
  - drbitboy 12y ago
    The hibernation mode of New Horizons has the RTG "cylinder" axis perpendicular to the spin axis, so unless there is asymmetry around the axis of the RTG, I would not expect to see any thermal recoil force. I guess that means we would not expect to see any effect, which neither validates nor invalidates the accepted thermal recoil theory for Pioneer, but it would exclude any "New Physics" explanations (which the planets do already). You can read quite a bit of detail about NH in the data sets archived to-date in the Planetary Data System http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/ http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/ specifically http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/holdings/ http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/holdings/ look for data set directory names starting with nh- and subdirectories of those named catalog/ and document/. There is also a lot of geometry information available in the SPICE data set under /http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/pds/data/nh-j_p_ss-spice-6-v1.0/nhsp_1000/ http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/pds/data/nh-j_p_ss-spice-6... e.g. start at aareadme.htm
    - hga 12y ago
      I said that based on a Wikipedia reference to this paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.5135 http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.5135 Which proposed to do testing in late 2007 through 2008, which I gather didn't happen, no doubt because of the reason you point out.
p4bl0 12y ago
I never heard of the pioneer anomaly before, thanks for mentioning it, it's very interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly
32faction 12y ago
The anomaly was solved in 2012. The cause was heat being radiated from the power generator in the direction of motion causing the spacecraft to "brake"

FeatureRush 12y ago

Pioneer Anomaly was solved in 2012, once the thermal recoil force is properly accounted for, no anomalous acceleration remains.

hga 12y ago
Well, confirmation with another probe would be nice, and the New Horizons has an instrument (obviously included before the thermal solution) if NASA so chooses to perform the experiment. Will no doubt depend in part if they can find another object to examine beyond Pluto.
- drbitboy 12y ago
  The hibernation mode of New Horizons has the RTG "cylinder" axis perpendicular to the spin axis, so unless there is asymmetry around the axis of the RTG, I would not expect to see any thermal recoil force. I guess that means we would not expect to see any effect, which neither validates nor invalidates the accepted thermal recoil theory for Pioneer, but it would exclude any "New Physics" explanations (which the planets do already). You can read quite a bit of detail about NH in the data sets archived to-date in the Planetary Data System http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/ http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/ specifically http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/holdings/ http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/holdings/ look for data set directory names starting with nh- and subdirectories of those named catalog/ and document/. There is also a lot of geometry information available in the SPICE data set under /http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/pds/data/nh-j_p_ss-spice-6-v1.0/nhsp_1000/ http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/naif/pds/data/nh-j_p_ss-spice-6... e.g. start at aareadme.htm
  - hga 12y ago
    I said that based on a Wikipedia reference to this paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.5135 http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.5135 Which proposed to do testing in late 2007 through 2008, which I gather didn't happen, no doubt because of the reason you point out.

p4bl0 12y ago

I never heard of the pioneer anomaly before, thanks for mentioning it, it's very interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_anomaly

32faction 12y ago

The anomaly was solved in 2012. The cause was heat being radiated from the power generator in the direction of motion causing the spacecraft to "brake"