The flyby anomaly: A case for strong gravitomagnetism ?

Abstract

In the last two decades an anomalous variation in the asymptotic velocity of spacecraft performing a flyby manoeuvre around Earth has been discovered through careful Doppler tracking and orbital analysis. No viable hypothesis for a conventional explanation of this effect has been proposed and its origin remains unexplained. In this paper we discuss a strong transversal component of the gravitomagnetic field as a possible source of the flyby anomaly. We show that the perturbations induced by such a field could fit the anomalies both in sign and order of magnitude. But, although the secular contributions to the Gravity Probe B experimental results and the Lense-Thirring effect in geodynamics satellites can be made null, the detailed orbital evolution is easily in conflict with such an enhanced gravitomagnetic effect.

arXiv comment21 pages, 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (7)

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• A flyby anomaly for Juno? Not from standard physics
• On the effect of ocean tides and tesseral harmonics on spacecraft flybys of the Earth
• Kinematics effects of atmospheric friction in spacecraft flybys
• On a correlation among azimuthal velocities and the flyby anomaly sign
• The flyby anomaly: A multivariate analysis approach
• Gravitomagnetic Field of Rotating Rings