Quote:
Originally Posted by 01101001
Previously, from August 4 or thereabouts:
This could be yet another opportunity for reluctant believers in weird gravitational physics to analyze the captured navigational data, plug it into their superior non-mainstream physics formulas, produce a more accurate analysis report that would support their ideas, and demonstrate to the world how much better off we'd be if only people would accept that the weird physics is the one true physics. Just saying they could, if they had the passion and time, maybe, and funding, if they really cared, and their ideas were actually sound and supportable, you know?
No takers? Not gonna take us to the promised land?
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Sorry, missed my cue. It wasn't until shortly before this pass that the Messenger website posted that they used 'solar wind tacking" to trim Messenger's final approach, which was still off-target after the final trimming manuver. We know they ended up using a gross positive gravity anomaly at the moment of closest approach to model the resulting trajectory, and moved the next orbital correction up ~two weeks. It is clear that it is difficult to keep Messenger on track. (Nice job, Messenger team.) What is not clear is why - they have published that they think they have a good handle on solar wind corrections.
So why no detailed prediction of what happens next? Because we do not have a detailed accounting of how and why Messenger was off-coarse, or by how much. Rough trajectory observational reporting does not allow any more than rough predictions of what will happen next.
In general, motion of Messenger away from the sun should net more acceleration towards the sun than expected (notice this is opposite of the Pioneer anomally), gravitational assists less braking, and motion towards the sun less acceleration. This is all complicated by the parallel prediction that the speed of light varies very slightly more-than-expected in the sun's gravitational well. I don't expect details to emerge for several months; and I'm not sure it is kosher to repeat an ATM prediction on a space exploration thread. What we do know is Messengers first pass netted a
curious acceleration that on first blush appears to be exactly opposite from what I expected
We know they made it, we know good Doppler signals were recorded throughout the pass, and this is a first (there was a blind spot in the first pass)....what is Messenger telling us this time?