A search for Planet Nine with small spacecraft:Three-body, post-Newtonian, non-gravitational, planetary and Kuiper Belt effects

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the feasibility of detecting hypothetical Planet Nine using small spacecraft by analyzing various gravitational and non-gravitational effects on spacecraft trajectories, including three-body, post-Newtonian, and Kuiper Belt influences.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of multiple effects impacting small spacecraft trajectories for Planet Nine detection, including gravitational, non-gravitational, and relativistic influences.

Findings

Solar radiation pressure dominates at low spacecraft velocities.

Drag force is significant at higher spacecraft velocities.

Relativistic effects are negligible for detection purposes.

Abstract

A hypothetical gravitating body in the outer Solar System, the so-called Planet Nine, was proposed to explain the unexpected clustering of the Kuiper Belt Objects. As it has not been observed via telescopes, it was conjectured to be a primordial black hole (of the size of a quince) that could be gravitationally detected by laser-launching or solar sailing many small spacecraft. Here, we study various aspects affecting such a search for Planet Nine. Our basic observable is the angular displacement in the trajectory of a small spacecraft which will be mainly affected by the gravity of Planet Nine, augmented with several other 3-body, non-gravitational, post-Newtonian, planetary, and Kuiper Belt effects. First, we calculate the effect of the Sun in the framework of the circular restricted three-body problem of the Sun--Planet Nine-spacecraft for the two particular initial conditions. Then, we study the effects of Kuiper Belt and outer planets, namely Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, as well as non-gravitational perturbations such as magnetic and drag forces exerted by the interstellar medium; and the solar radiation pressure. In addition, we investigate the post-Newtonian general relativistic effects such as the frame-dragging, Schwarzschild effect, and geodetic precession on the spacecraft trajectory. We show that the leading order angular displacement is due to the solar radiation pressure for the lower spacecraft velocities, and the drag force for the higher spacecraft velocities. Among the general relativistic effects, the frame-dragging has the smallest effect; and the Schwarzschild effect due to Sun has the largest effect. However, none of the general relativistic effects produces a meaningful contribution to the detection.