Pioneer Doppler data analysis: study of periodic anomalies

Authors: A. Levy, B. Christophe, P. Berio, G. Metris, J-M. Courty, S. Reynaud

(Submitted on 16 Sep 2008)

Abstract: This paper reports the results of an analysis of the Doppler tracking data of Pioneer probes which did show an anomalous behaviour. A software has been developed for the sake of performing a data analysis as independent as possible from that of J. Anderson et al. (Phys. Rev. D65, 082004, 2002), using the same data set.

A first output of this new analysis is a confirmation of the existence of a secular anomaly with an amplitude about 0.8 nm s$^{-2}$ compatible with that reported by Anderson et al. A second output is the study of periodic variations of the anomaly, which we characterize as functions of the azimuthal angle $\varphi$ defined by the directions Sun-Earth Antenna and Sun-Pioneer.

An improved fit is obtained with periodic variations written as the sum of a secular acceleration and two sinusoids of the angles $\varphi$ and $2\varphi$. The tests which have been performed for assessing the robustness of these results are presented.

Comments: 13 pages, 6 figures

Subjects: General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc); Space Physics (physics.space-ph)

Cite as: arXiv:0809.2682v1 [gr-qc]

Submission history

From: Serge Reynaud [view email]

[v1] Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:33:05 GMT (117kb)

http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.2682