The so-called Pioneer anomaly, an anomalous acceleration that was detected in these missions, stood out for many years as a potential deviation from General Relativity. It sparked many explanation attempts and generated great controversy around the true value of thermally induced acceleration. A new method was developed to address this issue. It is presented here along with the battery of tests performed to ensure the reliability of its results. The method is based on a distribution of point-like sources and a reflection model inspired by computer graphics techniques. The results show that the Pioneer anomaly can be fully explained through anisotropic thermal radiation originating from the probes themselves. The same method was also used to model the non-gravitational acceleration detected during a gravitational experiment performed in the Cassini mission. It is shown that the measured acceleration can be modelled by thermal effects. The Pioneer and Cassini gravitational tests inspire a proposal of a new outer solar system mission that can improve on them. One outstanding trajectory anomaly is the so-called flyby anomaly. Due to the absence of a full characterisation, this thesis proposes a new experimental method to study this effect. In this thesis the reader will have the privilege to read, first hand, the development of one of the approaches to compute the effect of onboard thermal sources.
Trajectory Anomalies in Interplanetary Spacecraft, A Method for Determining Accelerations Due to Thermal Emissions and New Mission Proposals
2015
81 Seiten
Theses
English
Interplanetary trajectory design for the Galileo mission
AIAA | 1983
|European Patent Office | 2018
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