Help Solve the Mystery of the Pioneer Anomaly

deglr6328 writes "Very soon, NASA will be dismantling and scrapping its only computer left which is able to access and process the data on its ancient 7- and 9-track magnetic tapes. "Who cares", you say? Well, the Planetary Society for one and they're hoping you might care as well. The data held on these (few hundred) tapes is no ordinary forgettable data, it is the complete archive of the first 15 years of all the data returned to Earth by the Pioneer spacecraft which were sent into interstellar space. This additional and thus far unexamined data (the data after 1988 is available and has already been examined) may hold the key to solving what is considered one of the top problems in physics today, the so called Pioneer anomaly, where the observed trajectory of these spacecraft (and a couple others) deviates noticeably from our very precise expectation. The reason for the anomaly may be as mundane as uneven radiation pressure or escaping thruster fuel or it may be as groundbreaking as a clue to completely new physics, perhaps related to dark matter or dark energy. The Planetary Society is planning on recovering this data and poring over it meticulously to look for something which may have been missed or hidden from current investigations into the phenomenon. They need money to do this, about $250,000, and are asking for donations to fund the project. You do not need to be a member to donate. There are no serious proposals to send any more spin-stabilized spacecraft on solar escape trajectories any time in the near future and this is probably the only tenable method we have to directly investigate this mystery in the interim."

Comments

Have you heard of Nero?

[yotto]

I'm not making a joke. Can't they just rip the tapes to a hard drive? This isn't Star Wars where you can't copy the "data tapes" after all.

How much do you want to bet...

[scorp1us]

That those several hundred tapes will fit on a $10 USB key? That's what 128 or 256MB these days?

If...

[fimbulvetr]

If we donate, and they reach the amount, will the data be open to everyone?
That is absolutely critical, I will not donate unless I can see the data.

Funding

[fejikso]

$250,000 sounds like very little money compared to other NASA projects. Why can't my tax dollars go to these projects instead of the military?

Re:Funding

[jafac]

Because defense spending is a necessary and Constitutionally-justified federal espense. Space exploration is not.

Think of space exploration as far-sighted defense spending. Otherwise, think of how the world would be today if, in the 1940's and 1950's, the US did no ballistic missile research at all, and let the Soviets take LEO, Geosynchronous Orbit, the Moon, and everything else.

Every dollar invested into the space program, public education, interstate highways, power grids, even welfare and medicaid, is a dollar well-spent towards shoring up national defense. Just not in as direct a way as you'd like.

What is money POORLY invested in defense or national security, is $200 Billion to invade a country, destabilize it's govenrment so it can be taken over by Iran. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/07/21/iran/ index_np.html

So in short

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

The Planetary Society is planning on recovering this data and poring over it meticulously to look for something which may have been missed or hidden from current investigations into the phenomenon. They need money to do this, about $250,000, and are asking for donations to fund the project.

Let me sum up: the USA boldly sends a probe in space, at a very great cost to taxpayers. Some decades later, NASA is forced to scrap the only computer that can access the unique (and very expensive) data collected by said probe, because the administration refuses to fund them properly.

That's sad enough, but the saddest thing is: a bunch of passionate guys (the planetary society) are begging a measly quarter million bucks to save that priceless data, and the administration just stands there! That's like the cost of running a humvee for a week in Iraq or something. How does that look to the outside world? like a decrepit country where non-profit orgs are forced to take matters into their own hands to save their national treasures. Well done USA :-(

Re:So in short

[CheshireCatCO]

Except that most of the useful data from the missions have been saved in other formats by now. I can go to the planetary data system and pull up a lot of Pioneer data right now if I wanted to.

Not every data bit is equally valuable. In this case, the data was probably not originally considered very interesting so wasn't moved at the time. The fact that NASA hasn't copied the data already suggests to me that people near research didn't think that that data would be very helpful in the first place. So while I wish that they'd transfered the data long ago and I applaude the Planetary Society, I am not convinced that this is a horrible failing on NASA's part.

Re:Funding TP

[Camel Pilot]

Yep, the military probably spends $250,000 for just ass wipe per day in Iraq.

But how huge?

[John Harrison]

For instance, how much data is there? I've read some of the linked articles and I can't find any estimate of how many MB there might be. I would guess that there isn't a massive amount of data simply because the thing was designed within the limits of 1970s technology and they had to be able to record the data as it was coming in.

Also, I would be shocked if NASA didn't document any of the file formats used. I've worked on a NASA project and they are all about documentation. In fact, I was writing a system used to document the shuttle booster production process.

Re:But how huge?

[cnettel]

If Doppler data is relevant, and has been saved, this indicates that there can be quite a lot of metadata, in addition to the transmission itself.

(I would imagine that 16 bps is the raw data rate from the probe?)

Re:RTFF

[Otter]

Thanks for pulling that out. It seems to me, though, that the key part is:

Why does it cost $250,000 to recover the data? This seems like a lot.

This amount enables us first to save the data from destruction, and then to support the complex analyses necessary to solve this mystery. We may well have to bring in more help from other eminent "celestial mechanicians" to provide fresh perspectives on the anomaly.

Before giving them a cent, I'd really like to know a) how much the data retrieval costs and b) whether it really can't be done by EDS or someone else accustomed to dealing with ancient data files. I'm certainly not donating for them to "may well have to bring in more help".

Rather qualified

[Richard W.M. Jones]

First, the data first must be recovered, validated, documented, and preliminary analyses must be done. After those tasks are completed (probably taking months to a year),

Why not publish the data immediately, and qualify and expand it as they go along?

Rich.

Re:Rather qualified

[terrymr]

Probably because publishing 10010100101001010100101001010100101010101001 .... isn't going to help you a whole lot without knowledge of where you are in the data stream, what instrument is telling you that etc.

The validation, documentation & preliminary analysis steps are all about taking the raw data stream and making it into a useful set of values.

Re:RTFF

[Rich0]

Yes, but the only urgent part of this project is recovering the data.

In theory for far less you could simply recover the data, test that it was recovered properly, and then stick it on a webpage for anybody in the world to analyze.

Their proposal is to solve the secrets of the universe for $250k. I might suggest that maybe the goal should be to simply transfer the data for $10k, and let somebody else pay for solving the secrets of the universe. The data recovery project is also far more likely to be successful...

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, you reading...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

...this? Get your damn wallet out!

Re:RTFF

[Pete]

I don't have anything particularly intelligent to say other than that I totally agree with you.

That Planetary Society FAQ does seem like... now what's the right word.... bullshit. So they came up with a suspiciously large and round number ($250K) but, as far as we've seen, no detailed budget behind it? No explanation of what happens to excess funds?

For fuck's sake, Planetary Society people, it looks disturbingly like a "don't think just donate! QUICKLY!" campaign, built around fear of NASA apparently doing something extraordinarily stupid. There are just too many holes in the story, too much that makes no sense.

I strongly suspect that they really just want to fund a few qualified people to work on the data full-time for 6-12 months. But if that's so, a little honesty would be appreciated. There's no fucking way I'd donate to support some ridiculous US salary, when I'm sure there are an enormous number of university-based people all around the world that would love to spend time analysing this kind of data and would do it for free.

And yeah, it is kind of hazy regarding what information of value they hope to extract from this data. The slashdot writeup "...or it may be as groundbreaking as a clue to completely new physics, perhaps related to dark matter or dark energy" sounds like a nutcase trying to sell something.