These disks contain telemetric data, temperature and power readings that both Pioneer probes had transmitted back to mission control up to 2003 (when Pioneer 10 lost contact with Earth). That is until NASA physicist Slava Turyshev, co-discoverer of the anomaly, rescued a number of Pioneer magnetic data storage disks from being thrown out in 2006. 240,000 miles is a tiny deviation after 6.5 billion miles (10.5 billion km) of travel (it would take light 10 hours to cover this distance), but it’s a deviation all the same and physicists are having a very hard time trying to work out what the problem is. This might sound like a long way, but in astronomical terms it’s miniscule. The Pioneer probes had been measured some 240,000 miles (386,000 km) closer to the Sun than predicted. Not by much, but both were experiencing a slight but constant sunward acceleration. Ten years ago Pioneer scientists noticed that something was wrong the probes were slightly off course. But a few years on, as the probes passed the through the 20-70 AU mark, something strange happened… not suddenly, but gradually. The Pioneer program really lived up to its name, pioneering deep space exploration. The Pioneer 10 and 11 deep space probes were launched in 19, visiting Jupiter and Saturn before pushing on toward interplanetary space, into the unknown. See, I knew there would be a simple explanation… ![]() ![]() Is it a simple fuel leak, pushing the probes of course? Is it phantom dark matter dragging them down? Or do the gravity textbooks need to be re-written? Unfortunately there’s still no one answer, but some researchers believe there might be a small deviation in the large-scale space-time Einstein described in his famous theory of general relativity. Scientists have been arguing over the cause of this mysterious force for a decade and reasons for the Pioneer anomaly range from the bizarre to the sublime. Both Pioneer probes are approximately 240,000 miles (386,000 km) closer to the Sun than predicted by calculation.
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