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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."
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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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?
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
from the wikipedia link:
...
"When all known forces acting on the spacecraft are taken into consideration, a very small but unexplained force remains. It causes a constant sunwards acceleration of (8.74 ± 1.33) × 10^-10 m/s2 for both spacecraft.
"Data from the Galileo and Ulysses spacecraft are also indicative of a similar effect, although for various reasons (such as their relative proximity to the Sun) firm conclusions cannot be drawn from these sources."
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
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"
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.
Lasers Controlled Games!
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
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
Perhaps. We don't know because Voyager, like most other spacecraft, is 3-axis stabilised. That means it keeps pointed the right way using only its thrusters. Pioneer is spin stabilised, like a rifle bullet in flight, so requires much smaller pointing corrections using thrusters. The anomaly is a very slight one, so slight that it is lost in the uncertainty caused by the level of thruster activity on 3-axis stabilised craft.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
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
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.
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
I have been involved with the Planetary Society before and they are a group of good people. If you put a note saying this is specifically what you want your money spent on, I'm sure they would honor it.
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."
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...
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
UFO - 500 zarbos
Tractor beam - 100 zarbos
Antimatter fuel - 30 zarbos
Confusing the puny humans for decades - priceless