• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Flyby Anomaly: The Unexplained Phenomenon Affecting Several NASA Spacecraft

September 25, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

On December 8, 1990, the NASA Galileo spacecraft experienced what has been dubbed a “flyby anomaly” as it flew past the Earth on its way to Jupiter and its moons. The anomaly, seen in several other spacecraft since then, remains an unexplained mystery to this day.

Advertisement

In missions to visit objects in the faraway Solar System, NASA has regularly employed “gravity assists”. As spacecraft approach a large body (planets or a star), momentum is transferred from the planet to the craft, slowing the orbit of the object a tiny amount in exchange for a significant increase in velocity. In essence, you steal a bit of kinetic energy from the planet or star. 

“Several robotic spacecraft have used the ‘gravity assist’ technique to achieve their targets ‘high up’ in the Sun’s gravity well. Voyager 2 launched in August 1977 and flew by Jupiter for reconnaissance, and for a trajectory boost to Saturn,” NASA explains. 

“Voyager 1 launched the following month and did the same (reaching Jupiter before Voyager 2 did). Voyager 2 then obtained an assist from Saturn and another one later from Uranus, climbing all the way to Neptune and beyond. Galileo took one kick from Venus and two from Earth, while orbiting the Sun en route to its destination, Jupiter. Cassini took two boosts from Venus, one from Earth, and another from Jupiter to gain enough momentum to reach Saturn.”



NASA has used gravity assists around Earth a fair number of times now. Analyzing six of these flybys by the Galileo, NEAR, Cassini, Rosetta, and MESSENGER spacecraft, teams have found small amounts of acceleration by the spacecraft beyond what was expected from the flyby.

Advertisement

“We report here on results from a recent study involving the data analysis and interpretation of radio Doppler data from all six flybys. We find that there is indeed an anomalous energy change during Earth flybys on the order of 10-6 , although we have been unable to find a physical cause or systematic error source for the anomaly,” the team who spotted the anomaly wrote in a paper published in 2008.

“Like the Pioneer anomaly, and perhaps even more surprising, the Earth flyby anomaly is a real effect inherent to the tracking of spacecraft. Its source is unknown.”

That team believed the effect was related to the Earth’s rotation. But all sorts of explanations for the anomalies have been proposed, from relativistic effects to a dark matter halo around Earth.

“To explain the cases of negative drag flybys, exothermic inelastic scattering of dark matter on ordinary matter is required,” one team suggested. “The cases of positive drag require either elastic dark matter scattering, or an asymmetric dark matter velocity distribution in the inelastic case. In addition, the dark matter must be confined well within the moon’s orbit and depleted near the earth’s surface.”

Advertisement

Complicating the picture, some spacecraft, including Juno, experienced no anomaly during gravitational assists, suggesting new physics might be a bit of a stretch, at least until more data comes in from future flybys. 

Several teams believed at the time that the Pioneer anomaly – anomalous acceleration in the Pioneer missions at around 20 astronomical units (AU), with one AU being the distance between the Earth and the Sun – could also be due to new physics. However, later probes did not undergo the same anomalous acceleration, and the anomaly was found to likely be a thermal effect causing recoil. 

It is likely that there is a simple as-yet-unidentified cause for the flyby anomalies, too, or that there was some sort of data error. With all the spacecraft whizzing around us over the next few decades, maybe we won’t have too much longer to wait for an answer to the puzzle.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Near Space Labs closes $13M Series A to send more Earth imaging robots to the stratosphere
  2. Berlin police investigating ‘Havana syndrome’ cases at U.S. embassy – Spiegel
  3. What Is An Adam’s Apple?
  4. Nearest Young Earth-Sized Planet Is Half Lava And Metal As Hell

Source Link: Flyby Anomaly: The Unexplained Phenomenon Affecting Several NASA Spacecraft

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Hippos Hung Around In Europe 80,000 Years Later Than We Thought
  • Officially Gone: Slender-Billed Curlew, Once-Widespread Migratory Bird, Declared Extinct By IUCN
  • Watch: Rare Footage Captures Freaky Faceless Cusk Eels Lurking On The Deep-Sea Floor
  • Watch This Funky Sea Pig Dancing Its Way Through The Deep Sea, Over 2,300 Meters Below The Surface
  • NASA Lets YouTuber Steve Mould Test His “Weird Chain Theory” In Space
  • The Oldest Stalagmite Ever Dated Was Found In Oklahoma Rocks, Dating Back 289 Million Years
  • 2024’s Great American Eclipse Made Some Birds Behave In Surprising Ways, But Not All Were Fooled
  • “Carter Catastrophe”: The Math Equation That Predicts The End Of Humanity
  • Why Is There No Nobel Prize For Mathematics?
  • These Are The Only Animals Known To Incubate Eggs In Their Stomachs And Give “Birth” Out Their Mouths
  • Constipated? This One Fruit Could Help, Says First-Ever Evidence-Led Diet Guidance
  • NGC 2775: This Galaxy Breaks The Rules Of “Galactic Evolution” And Baffles Astronomers
  • Meet The “Four-Eyed” Hirola, The World’s Most Endangered Antelope With Fewer Than 500 Left
  • The Bizarre 1997 Experiment That Made A Frog Levitate
  • There’s A Very Good Reason Why October 1582 On Your Phone Is Missing 10 Days
  • Skynet-1A: Military Spacecraft Launched 56 Years Ago Has Been Moved By Persons Unknown
  • There’s A Simple Solution To Helping Avoid Erectile Dysfunction (But You’re Not Going To Like It)
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS May Be 10 Billion Years Old, This Rare Spider Is Half-Female, Half-Male Split Down The Middle, And Much More This Week
  • Why Do Trains Not Have Seatbelts? It’s Probably Not What You Think
  • World’s Driest Hot Desert Just Burst Into A Rare And Fleeting Desert Bloom
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version