Paper detail

Pioneer 10 and 11 orbit determination analysis shows no discrepancy with Newton-Einstein's laws of gravity

The present work describes the investigation of the navigation anomaly of Pioneer 10 and 11 probes which became known as the Pioneer Anomaly. It appeared as a linear drift in the Doppler data received by the spacecraft, which has been ascribed to an approximately constant sunward acceleration of about $8.5 \times 10^{-13} km/s^2$. Since then, the existence of the anomaly has been confirmed independently by several groups and a large effort was devoted to find its origin. The present study consists of two main parts: thermal modeling of the spacecraft throughout its trajectory, and orbit determination analysis. Based on existing documentation and published telemetry data we built a thermal finite element model of the spacecraft, whose complexity has been constrained to a degree allowing for sensitivity analysis, leading to the computation of its formal uncertainty. The trajectory analysis and orbit determination was carried out using NASA/JPL's ODP (Orbit Determination Program) and our results show that orbital solutions may be achieved that do not require the addition of any "unknown" acceleration other than the one of thermal origin.