Modelling the nongravitational acceleration during Cassini's gravitation experiments

TL;DR

This paper models the thermal acceleration of the Cassini spacecraft during its solar conjunction experiment, using a thermal model and Monte Carlo simulation, finding results consistent with Doppler data analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed thermal model and Monte Carlo simulation to accurately estimate the spacecraft's nongravitational acceleration.

Findings

Thermal acceleration is approximately 3.01 x 10^{-9} m/s^2.

Model results agree with Doppler data estimates.

Provides a method for precise thermal acceleration computation.

Abstract

In this paper we present a computation of the thermally generated acceleration of the Cassini probe during its solar conjunction experiment, obtained from a model of the spacecraft. We build a thermal model of the vehicle and perform a Monte Carlo simulation to find a thermal acceleration with a main component of $(3.01 \pm 0.33) \times 10^{-9} {\rm m/s^2}$. This result is in close agreement with the estimates of this effect performed through Doppler data analysis.