Search for a Solution of the Pioneer Anomaly

Understand

In 1972 and 1973 the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions were launched.

• They were the first to explore the outer solar system and achieved stunning breakthroughs in deep-space exploration.
• But beginning in about 1980 an unmodeled force of \sim 8 \times 10^{-8} cm/s^2, directed approximately towards the Sun, appeared in the tracking data.
• It later was unambiguously verified as being in the data and not an artifact.