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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."
1.Deviate spacecrafts from their precisely-planned flightpaths
2.???
3.Profit!
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
The damn thing only supported DVD-R discs, not DVD+R, that's why it didn't work.
I have an 8-track deck in my Charger...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
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This additional and thus far unexamined data
Let me be the first to say WTF?!!
This is inexcusable.
It's insane to throw this project out the window..
I hope people will step up to the plate on this. I for one will..
That those several hundred tapes will fit on a $10 USB key? That's what 128 or 256MB these days?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
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.
What and miss a great opportunity for a wonderful conspiracy theory in the future?
"They destroyed those things so we wouldn't know what it REALLY found. I know they did! Why else would they destroy them. It must be a conspiracy!"
Just as well, i was away to send a million pounds but thought "oh no! im not a member! theyll never accept my non-space-geek cash!"
$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?
If the difference of their expected trajectories have no commonality, it would seem to mean either some new force is affecting the craft differently, or each craft has its own mechanical explanation as to why they aren't staying the course.
Do *none* of these craft follow the expected trajectory? If not, then we really can't be sure whether this is a collection of mechanical issues or various effects of the unknown force. If one or two craft followed course perfectly, I would be inclined to say that the rest have mechanical issues knocking them off course.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Anyone care to shed any further light on what format these tapes are in, how many there are and in what condition?
I had a summer job a decade ago ripping 9-track tapes (geophys data) to CD-R (back when CD-Rs were $20 each and a burner was $5k!), pretty sure the people I did it for still have the gear. Planetary guys - I couldn't see a contact address on your page!
Will the data be made publicly available?
Yes. 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), the data will be made publicly available, including second-order data products when the raw data is processed by JPL orbit software.
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
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
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
That's just what they're planning to do. The problem is that the current format can only be understood by a particular type of obsolete computer that NASA is about to scrap.
I had a letter somewhere that explained the problem in detail but I must have tossed it (I'm a member of the society, so I get the occasional mailing). They're planning to port the data to a modern format so it can be examined properly.
Only on
Yep, the military probably spends $250,000 for just ass wipe per day in Iraq.
If you think this data loss would be unfortunate, you should check out the Earth Resource Observing Satellite (EROS) Data Center run by the US Geological Survey in Sioux Falls South Dakota. For years NASA has been dumping all manner of data tapes there. 9-track, 24-track, literally hundreds of Terabytes of data. And many of those tapes are literally growing mold, sitting in boxes and racks in the basement, for lack of funding to transfer them to more permanent media.
Think about it, decades of climate data , going back to the 1970's, is being lost due to lethargy on the part of Clowngress. Or is it lethargy.
Let's see, three and a half decades of climate change data, detailed and explicit. Hmmmm.... who *wouldn't* want that data placed online where researchers could access it? I wonder.....
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
Why is there a big hoopla about Planetary society raising meager $250,000?
You need money to carry out research.
NASA obviously doesn't care much about basic sciences, and is quite busy wasting tax dollars in 'spectacular' but dumb and useless shuttle launches.
Planetary society is atleast trying to make some sense. Why not help them?
- Sh!t
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.
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As for the data, a lot of people here seem to be really naive about how hard it is to recover old data like this. "Just download it onto a hard disk." Well, yeah, but the trick is getting working 9-track drives (relatively easy) and 7-track drives (much harder) and going through the effort required to ensure you get the data off successfully instead of destroying it. (Remember, these tapes are very old and probably extremely fragile, and you may only get one shot at recovering the data.)
Does anyone know why NASA is dismantling the computers if there really is such a potential treasure-trove of knowledge on these tapes?
My guess is the operating cost. Those old machines are very VERY costly to run, between the power they need, the special rooms, and the ridiculous MTBF of the componentry that's measured in dozens of minutes.
But still, I agree. Scrapping the computer on that reason alone is forgetting the hundreds of millions spent on sending the probe out in space in the first place.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
What I utterly fail to understand is why NASA thinks they can get away with scrapping the only computer on the planet that can read the tapes, without spending a few days to read the tapes off first????? What kind of <oxymoron>brilliant NASA administrator<oxymoron> thought that was even remotely a good idea?
AFAICT, They are fully aware of the fact that they have data that defines priceless, and they're just going to toss it in the trash along with the computer because they got tired of trying to figure it out.
Now that's a FAQ for you, Planetary Society...
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Possibly because the computer is the size of a large room, the tape drive is half the size of a car, and the air-conditioning for it is in danger of melting. Maybe.
When I was a physicist we had a DEC VAX with a tape drive, it took a whole room, and probably had less power than my laptop. Tape drives are not small things.
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.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Yes, it's not a lot of cash in the scheme of things,
but why the hell won't NASA just donate the computer and tapes to a university? If they're going to toss it in the trash, they should be interested in giving it away for free. Put the data on the Web for all, and we're done. In fact NASA themselves should be able to do this inside of a week or two, presumably they know how to read these tapes themselves..
I don't see where anyone needs to raise $250K..??
Please explain yourselves, planetary society types..
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Next...
These tapes should be readable on any midrange or mainframe. I own a Pr1me computer which should serve the purpose. Contactinformation is below: Jeffrey Bottoms, 4405 Pease #3, Houston, TX 77023
First of all, why would NASA have years worth of data coming in from a spacecraft they launched, and NOT have analysed it? I find this very hard to believe. Also, if they thought this information held valuable clues to a puzzling scientific mystery, they would have surely looked into it. In addition, how can this tape player be the only one on Earth that can read these tapes?
I think that the issue is being distorted and blown out of proportion. I have a feeling that someone wanted to further their pet cause and they didn't mind letting pesky facts get in their way.
I'm not surprised that NASA was unable to develop funding to convert / analyze this data. After working with them for a few years, and with the 'Military Industrial Complex" for more than that, I can clearly say:
"If it isn't in the requirements document, it's not going to get done, no matter how simple or beneficial it is."
I worked on a project back in the early 80's. We were launching missles on a test range. I was responsible for the telemetry recording. We used a massive Honeywell tape drive and a bunch of telemetry circuitry to record at 1MHz. After designing the circuitry to measure and feed the data (all analog, BTW) to the drives, I asked my boss where the specs were for the circuitry to read the data back off the tapes for analysis.
I was told there wasn't any. It wasn't a requirement. And I had better leave it at that. I kind of freaked- how the hell can we spend $100K in hardware and time to record tapes that can never, ever be read ?
The answer ? It was basically butt covering. If something happened they would ask the gummint to fund a project to read the data off the tapes.
I went ahead and designd and built a playback system on the side, nights and weekends. We went ahead and launched missles. We had guidance failures. I was asked to read the tapes. I pulled out my breadboarded setup, and read the tapes. The project team was happy, problems were solved, etc.
And I was put on the next layoff list for 'failing to obey orders'. So I got a better job, and quit before the axe fell (large defense contractor axes fell sloowly back then- lots of little clerk types had to spent their quality time with each piece of paper).
The Moral ? Never underestimate the stupidity of large organizations- governmental or otherwise.
As far as I understand it, this need to bake tapes to resuce them was only an issue because of a specific type of "binder" glue used in their original production. I believe Maxell was one of the companies responsible for using what turned out to be poor binder, between a certain set of production years, for example.
That's why you'll see plenty of people having no problem playing back 20+ year old tapes, yet others have huge problems.
Because thee are probably hundreds of tapes of data that would take weeks to read and transfer. You have to pay someone to do this, as well as pay someone to maintain the machine in the interm. Neither of which is cheap. Particularly for a mission whose funding has long since turned to dust.
At my lab in grad school we had some Voyager tapes that were only readable by one type of (obsolete) machine. We always wanted to get rid of the machine because it was taking up a ton of space and was a bitch to keep working. But getting the people reasonsible to copy the data to a new format was an uphill battle because there was no money to pay someone (even a student) to do it.
I'm not saying that this is the way things should be or that priorities have been well-set, here. But the economic reality is that it's not as simple as you think.
...this? Get your damn wallet out!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Danny Hillis of the Long Now Foundation has been pointing out these kinds of problems for years.
Most types of digital storage is not good for conserving data in the long run. Hardware changes. File formats change. Most digital media have a very limited lifetime.
As an example: We have a very good record of the letters that Greek philosophers wrote to each other 2000 years ago. On the other had there's loads of important research data from the early days of computing that's already lost forever.
siener's youtube channel
It's funny because of all the cheese and peanutbutter they pack in MREs. You never shit after eating those things, and $250,000 is way to much to be spending on TP for a bunch of non-shitting soldiers.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
This paper reviews the current status of the anomaly and describes how the Pioneer data could help. It may be a bit math-intensive for some, but the words surrounding the sums do pull them all into focus.
boakes.org
1.Deviate spacecrafts from their precisely-planned flightpaths.
2.Blockbuster movie staring famous Scientologist.
3.Profit!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Ah, I see you haven't been around government projects very long. If the Planetary Society needs $250K, then NASA would need something like $250 million. You know, cost over runs, incompenent / lazy workers, the "it ain't my job" syndrome, etc.
Will you please RTFA. It clearly says 7 and 9 track tapes.
But given the obvious age of your vehicle, I'm sure it can be lined up for a stand-in role in The Dukes of Hazzard 2 -- The Search for our Alienated Fans.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
GPL? Sure, there is so much value in being able to modify that data ...
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I would have happily volunteered to spend a couple of days swapping disks in order to salvage all this lot, but alas, I'm the wrong side of the Atlantic. The guy in charge has recently been made redundant, and he was desperate to find someone to hand off all this to... but there's incredible beaurocracy. (I gather all the data was actually supposed to have been destroyed some years ago, but through some 'oversight' hadn't been.)
Alas, I don't have permission to publish his address, but I'll put him in touch with the Planetary Society on the off chance he doesn't know about this.
Interestingly, for years he ran the Pioneer spacecraft off a Mac Quadra 950! Check out the screen shots...
Only it was from the Nigerian Planetary Society, and they promised a return on my investment.
The computer hasn't been scrapped yet, and they should take advantage of that.
Why can't they use the obsolete equipment to read all of the tapes and transfer the raw data to a more modern medium?
My totally uninformed guess is that a couple of hundred tapes should fit on a couple of DVDs, which can then be replicated as many times as needed.
The hardware needed to communicate the info between the obsolete computer and an ordinary PC (say, over an RS-232 line or Centronics-style parallel port) should be relatively trivial to build.
I don't see why the entire operation should cost a quarter of a million dollars.
However, if they want to pay me that much, I'll do it.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
I have an 8-track deck in my Charger...
Will you please RTFA. It clearly says 7 and 9 track tapes.
But statistically speaking, it ought to work on average.
FreeSpeech.org
Here's a project for ya:
.9999 gold coins please.
- Go to eBay and buy one. (wait for the DRMO auction for the 7-track unit)
- Build a box to acess the drive - not real hard for a good hardware hacker
- build a Linux driver to access it (presuming no driver exists already for the card you connect it to)
- get the tapes via FOIA
Conclusion: get the data for next to nothing.
Oh, yeah, one last step:
- ship the 245,000 smackers you didn't use to my house, in
Nine track tapes were an industry standard for a LONG time. Finding drives to read them isn't that big a deal. I've got about six of them. One of which is connected to a Linux box right here, for the purpose of writing boot tapes for my PDP-11. SCSI MO drives aren't hard to find either. I've got several, and they turn up often. There are lots of people out there in the computer collecting community with VAXen and MO drives and tape drives of all sorts. I hear often of people that can't find a machine "anywhere" to read their old data. They apparently don't look too hard. There are several mailing lists and newsgroups of computer collectors, and it wouldn't be hard to find someone to help you recover your data. Us computer collectors love to have someone _else_ think that our hardware is useful.
And, if NASA is getting rid of an archaic machine and drives - someone should save it! There are LOTS of collectors out there, lots of hardware hackers and geeks like myself that love working on old machines, and could keep the machine operational and help transfer data.
In other words, yes, there is still a way to get data read in, even if you're sure that the media is too obsolete that nobody has a working drive. Nine track tapes, Magneto Optical, 8" floppies, Bernoulli cartridges, TK50 CompacTapes, QIC cartridges, MFM hard drives, SyQuest cartridges, paper tape, punched cards... The hardware is piled up all over the place, in the basements and bedrooms of people like me. Wether it's as common as a Commodore 64 5 1/4" floppy or as exotic as an Exatron Stringy Floppy or a 1600BPI nine track tape, chances are you can find someone with the machine and willing to help you.
Here are some links published on another group about this same topic, and all data that NASA knows about is already saved.
? sc=1972-012A&ds=*
? sc=1973-019A&ds=*
> http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog
> http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog
>Well, well, well...it looks like every bit of Pioneer 10 and 11 has been saved already, and can be accessed thru the proper channels (on tape, but apparently they will burn a CDROM on request).
An old friend of mine came into an old arcade game (defender) and the battery that kept the mainboard toasty (and the score history) had leaked acid all over it, nearly destroying it. He picked off what salvageable components were left on the board, scrounged around a number of dusty electronics stores to replace what could not be salvaged, bought a ROM programmer, made a new mainboard, slapped everything back together and the old game was restored. A few of the old pieces salvaged could not be made to work dependably and had to be replaced again, but over time the machine was back up and running.
The hard part is probably the media. I worked in radio for awhile and we were often faced with duplicating tapes after they'd exceeded a 5-7 year shelf life. I'm surprised that there was no plan for duping the data periodically to formats/platforms that could be sustained.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
After reading TFA its not clear if the original data is in analog format or digital. It seems that most readers assume its digital format, and thats what I was assuming too. If it were purely digital, then transferring the data to a new format would be a reasonably easy migration.
I suspect its in analog format - probably the original signal recordings. Which would make more sense for the expense of analyzing it - because you would be very interested in the phase relationships between different channels of data and their doppler shifts. Its the analog waveforms that could give insights into the timing effects over long distances.
The only PT Boat Journal on the web: http://www.PT171.org
I worked for the Lunar & Planetary Lab many years ago when we recieved hundreds of such tapes from Pioneer. At the time they were stored in racks in the computer room with an IBM 1130 system. Track density in those days was either 556 bpi or 800 bpi on 1 inch tape (memory) and recording technology was crude at best. Even then the fear was that the data would be irrecoverable in years. At the time, the lab was run by Dr. Sonnett who credited with the discovery that CMOS circuits were static sensitive. He came up with idea of grounding workers. This paved the way for low power electonics on some of these payloads. They were interesting days.