What do the orbital motions of the outer planets of the Solar System tell us about the Pioneer anomaly?

TL;DR

This study examines how an anomalous acceleration similar to the Pioneer spacecraft's would influence outer planet orbits, using recent observational data to rule out such forces in the 20-40 AU region of the Solar System.

Contribution

It demonstrates that a constant radial acceleration of the specified magnitude would produce detectable orbital effects, which are not observed, thus constraining the Pioneer anomaly's possible influence.

Findings

No detectable orbital signatures of the anomalous acceleration in outer planets

The data rules out a constant radial acceleration of 8.74×10^-10 m/s^2 in the 20-40 AU region

Orbital motions are consistent with standard gravitational models without additional forces

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the effects that an anomalous acceleration as that experienced by the Pioneer spacecraft after they passed the 20 AU threshold would induce on the orbital motions of the Solar System planets placed at heliocentric distances of 20 AU or larger as Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. It turns out that such an acceleration, with a magnitude of 8.74\times 10^-10 m s^-2, would affect their orbits with secular and short-period signals large enough to be detected according to the latest published results by E.V. Pitjeva, even by considering errors up to 30 times larger than those released. The absence of such anomalous signatures in the latest data rules out the possibility that in the region 20-40 AU of the Solar System an anomalous force field inducing a constant and radial acceleration with those characteristics affects the motion of the major planets.