New Theory About the Source of Pioneer Space Probe Deceleration

First time accepted submitter deathcow writes "After forty years, a fresh perspective on old Pioneer data leads to new conclusions as to why the Pioneer probes are decelerating. Many theories to the slowing probes have persisted over the years — was it gravity? some type of unforeseen radiation? dark matter? Thanks to the data backup preservation efforts of a NASA Ames Research engineer, mountains of old telemetry data were still available for studying this curious anomaly."

Comments

Regardless - the science is fascinating

[blanchae]

The design of these spacecrafts is simply amazing. No wonder the US was the technological marvel of the world at the time. Considering the tools that were available then and the thought that was put into the effects of space on the motion, is mind boggling. Not to mention a power source that will last 88 years and the fact that they are still going and communicating while using a 1 bit camera to create fantastic pictures. I am humbled. The technology that was created and developed as a side effect of this monumental tasks is what made the US a technology giant. We need more of this positive vision and less of the negative sabre rattling.

Here's something sad

[argStyopa]

....the entire mission cost -all the years in total - for Pioneer 10 was approximately $350 million (2001) USD. (It'll reach Aldebaran in about 2 million years.)

That's a little bit under a single week of NASA's budget this year. ($19bill) ...or about 4 hours of the Defense budget ($677 bill) ...or about an hour of the Social Security+Medicare budgets ($1.92 trillion).

Thermal force

[Geoffrey.landis]

It's thermal recall force from heat generated by components on Pioneer.

Right. and the headline is a little misleading, it's a "new" explanation only if you weren't following; since it was announced in late 2010. The "anomaly" is solved.

Popular Science article about Toth and Turyshev's work here: http://www.popsci.com/pioneeranomaly

More detailed calculations supporting the explanation:
Phys Rev Letters paper by Toth and Turyshev here: http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v108/i24/e241101
ArXIV paper confirming the work with more details: http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.5222v1

JPL press release: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-209&cid=release_2012-209&msource=12209
Centauri Dreams article: http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=23720

Still, it's a nice article to read about how the work is done.