Pioneers Anomaly - Further Research Avenues

Further Research Avenues

It is possible, but not proven, that this anomaly is linked to the flyby anomaly, which has been observed in other spacecraft. Although the circumstances are very different (planet flyby vs. deep space cruise), the overall effect is similar—a small but unexplained velocity change is observed on top of a much larger conventional gravitational acceleration.

The Pioneer spacecraft are no longer providing new data (the last contact having been on 23 January 2003) and Galileo was deliberately burned up in Jupiter's atmosphere at the end of its mission. So far, attempts to use data from current missions such as Cassini have not yielded any conclusive results. There are several remaining options for further research:

• Further analysis of the retrieved Pioneer data. This includes not only the data that was first used to detect the anomaly, but additional data that until recently was saved only in older, inaccessible computer formats and media. This data was recovered in 2006, converted to more modern formats, and is now available for analysis.
• The New Horizons spacecraft to Pluto is spin-stabilised for much of its cruise, and there is a possibility that it can be used to investigate the anomaly. New Horizons may have the same problem that precluded good data from the Cassini mission—its RTG is mounted close to the spacecraft body, so thermal radiation from it, bouncing off the spacecraft, may produce a systematic thrust of a not-easily predicted magnitude, several times as large as the Pioneer effect. Nevertheless efforts are underway to study the non-gravimetric accelerations on the spacecraft, in the hopes of having them well modeled for the long cruise to Pluto after the Jupiter fly-by that occurred in February 2007. In particular, despite any large systematic bias from the RTG, the 'onset' of the anomaly at or near the orbit of Saturn might be observed.
• A dedicated mission has also been proposed. Such a mission would probably need to surpass 200 AU from the Sun in a hyperbolic escape orbit.
• Observations of asteroids around 20 AU may provide insights if the anomaly's cause is gravitational.