Thermal recoil force, telemetry, and the Pioneer anomaly

TL;DR

This paper develops a formalism to accurately calculate the thermal recoil force on spacecraft from telemetry data, improving navigation precision and explaining the Pioneer anomaly.

Contribution

It introduces a new method to derive thermal recoil forces from basic principles and applies it to analyze the Pioneer anomaly using simulated data.

Findings

Thermal recoil force can be computed from telemetry data.

The approach helps explain the Pioneer anomaly.

Improves spacecraft navigation accuracy.

Abstract

Precision navigation of spacecraft requires accurate knowledge of small forces, including the recoil force due to anisotropies of thermal radiation emitted by spacecraft systems. We develop a formalism to derive the thermal recoil force from the basic principles of radiative heat exchange and energy-momentum conservation. The thermal power emitted by the spacecraft can be computed from engineering data obtained from flight telemetry, which yields a practical approach to incorporate the thermal recoil force into precision spacecraft navigation. Alternatively, orbit determination can be used to estimate the contribution of the thermal recoil force. We apply this approach to the Pioneer anomaly using a simulated Pioneer 10 Doppler data set.