Thermal recoil force, telemetry, and the Pioneer anomaly

Abstract

Precision navigation of spacecraft requires accurate knowledge of small forces, including the recoil force due to anisotropies of thermal radiation emitted by spacecraft systems. We develop a formalism to derive the thermal recoil force from the basic principles of radiative heat exchange and energy-momentum conservation. The thermal power emitted by the spacecraft can be computed from engineering data obtained from flight telemetry, which yields a practical approach to incorporate the thermal recoil force into precision spacecraft navigation. Alternatively, orbit determination can be used to estimate the contribution of the thermal recoil force. We apply this approach to the Pioneer anomaly using a simulated Pioneer 10 Doppler data set.

10 pages, 3 figures. Published version

References in corpus (7)

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• Understanding local Dwarf Spheroidals and their scaling relations under MOdified Newtonian Dynamics
• The Puzzle of the Flyby Anomaly
• Pioneer 10 and 11 orbit determination analysis shows no discrepancy with Newton-Einstein's laws of gravity
• Electrostatic accelerometer with bias rejection for Gravitation and Solar System physics
• The Pioneer Anomaly in the Light of New Data
• Modified Gravity and the Phantom of Dark Matter
• Conformal Cosmology and the Pioneer Anomaly
• Does the Neptunian system of satellites challenge a gravitational origin for the Pioneer anomaly?
• Gravity in Brans-Dicke theory with Born-Infeld scalar field and the Pioneer anomaly
• The Variable-c Cosmology as a Solution to Pioneer Anomaly