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

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?

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: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".

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...