Support for the thermal origin of the Pioneer anomaly

Abstract

We investigate the possibility that the anomalous acceleration of the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft is due to the recoil force associated with an anisotropic emission of thermal radiation off the vehicles. To this end, relying on the project and spacecraft design documentation, we constructed a comprehensive finite-element thermal model of the two spacecraft. Then, we numerically solve thermal conduction and radiation equations using the actual flight telemetry as boundary conditions. We use the results of this model to evaluate the effect of the thermal recoil force on the Pioneer 10 spacecraft at various heliocentric distances. We found that the magnitude, temporal behavior, and direction of the resulting thermal acceleration are all similar to the properties of the observed anomaly. As a novel element of our investigation, we develop a parameterized model for the thermal recoil force and estimate the coefficients of this model independently from navigational Doppler data. We find no statistically significant difference between the two estimates and conclude that once the thermal recoil force is properly accounted for, no anomalous acceleration remains.

arXiv comment5 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, accepted to Phys. Rev. Letters

References in corpus (11)

• Study of the anomalous acceleration of Pioneer 10 and 11
• Indication, from Pioneer 10/11, Galileo, and Ulysses Data, of an Apparent Anomalous, Weak, Long-Range Acceleration
• The Pioneer Anomaly
• The Study of the Pioneer Anomaly: New Data and Objectives for New Investigation
• Comment on ``Indication, from Pioneer 10/11, Galileo and Ulysses Data, of an Apparent Anomalous, Weak, Long-Range Acceleration''
• Support for temporally varying behavior of the Pioneer anomaly from the extended Pioneer 10 and 11 Doppler data sets
• Conventional Forces can Explain the Anomalous Acceleration of Pioneer 10
• A Prosaic Explanation for the Anomalous Accelerations Seen in Distant Spacecraft
• Thermal recoil force, telemetry, and the Pioneer anomaly
• Independent analysis of the orbits of Pioneer 10 and 11
• Modelling the reflective thermal contribution to the acceleration of the Pioneer spacecraft

Cited by in corpus (60)

• The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment
• Horizon-scale tests of gravity theories and fundamental physics from the Event Horizon Telescope image of Sagittarius A${}^{\ast }$
• The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment
• General Relativity and Cosmology: Unsolved Questions and Future Directions
• Hawking Radiation and Deflection of Light from Rindler Modified Schwarzschild Black Hole
• Solar system vs. gravitational-wave bounds on the graviton mass
• Gravitational Anomalies in the Solar System?
• Observable effects in a class of spherically symmetric static Finsler spacetimes
• Constraining the range of Yukawa gravity interaction from S2 star orbits II: Bounds on graviton mass
• Radioscience simulations in General Relativity and in alternative theories of gravity
• OSS (Outer Solar System): A fundamental and planetary physics mission to Neptune, Triton and the Kuiper Belt
• Testing Theories of Gravity with Planetary Ephemerides
• Emergence of the Cotton tensor for describing gravity
• Pioneer 10 and 11 orbit determination analysis shows no discrepancy with Newton-Einstein's laws of gravity
• Quasinormal modes and their anomalous behavior for black holes in $f(R)$ gravity
• Constraining the Schwarzschild-de Sitter Solution in Models of Modified Gravity
• Rindler Modified Schwarzschild Geodesics
• Spectroscopy of Rindler Modified Schwarzschild Black Hole
• Preliminary constraints on the location of the recently hypothesized new planet of the Solar System from planetary orbital dynamics
• The flyby anomaly: A case for strong gravitomagnetism ?
• The Flyby Anomaly and the Effect of a Topological Torsion Current
• Anomalous Post-Newtonian terms and the secular increase of the Astronomical Unit
• Science opportunities with solar sailing smallsats
• Solar System limits on gravitational dipoles
• Local gravitational physics of the Hubble expansion
• Testing gravity with interstellar precursor missions
• When Leaving the Solar System: Dark Matter Makes a Difference
• Reconstructing a Model for Gravity at Large Distances from Dark Matter Density Profiles
• Leading-order corrections to the thermodynamics of Rindler modified Schwarzschild black hole
• Light radiation pressure upon an optically orthotropic surface
• Effect of TTC on Satellite Orbital Mechanics
• Modelling the nongravitational acceleration during Cassini's gravitation experiments
• Unbiased acceleration measurements with an electrostatic accelerometer on a rotating platform
• Astrophysical Tests of Kinematical Conformal Cosmology in Fourth-Order Conformal Weyl Gravity
• Galaxy rotation curve in hyperconical universes: a natural relativistic MOND
• Re-Examination of Globally Flat Space-Time
• Can the apparent expansion of the Universe be attributed to an increasing vacuum refractive index ?
• Hyperbolic orbits of Earth flybys and effects of ungravity-inspired conservative potentials
• On the effect of ocean tides and tesseral harmonics on spacecraft flybys of the Earth
• A possible flyby anomaly for Juno at Jupiter
• On a correlation among azimuthal velocities and the flyby anomaly sign
• Observational evidence for travelling wave modes bearing distance proportional shifts
• Constraining an Expanding Locally Anisotropic metric from the Pioneer anomaly
• Estimating the thermally induced acceleration of the New Horizons spacecraft
• Pioneer 10 and 11 Spacecraft Anomalous Acceleration in the light of the Nonsymmetric Kaluza-Klein (Jordan-Thiry) Theory
• The flyby anomaly: A multivariate analysis approach
• A Novel Visualization of the Geometry of Special Relativity
• Prospects for a local detection of dark matter with future missions to Uranus and Neptune
• Anomalous accelerations in spacecraft flybys of the Earth
• On the possible onset of the Pioneer anomaly
• Schwarzschild and linear potentials in Mannheim's model of conformal gravity
• Three-Body Problem in Modified Dynamics
• Earth and Moon orbital anomalies
• The Pioneer Anomaly: an inconvenient reality or NASA's 12 year misconception?
• Model of a solar system in the conservative geometry
• Vibrating Rays Theory
• Enlarged Transformation Group: Star Models,Dark Matter Halos and Solar System Dynamics
• The Dark Matter Enigma
• Hints at a relationship between friction and relativistic physics
• Special relativity as the limit of an Aristotelian universal friction theory under Reye's assumption