• 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

  • If Birds Are Dinosaurs, Why Are None As Big As T. Rexes?
  • Psychologists Demonstrate Illusion That Could Be Screwing Up Our Perception Of Time
  • Why Are So Many Enormous Roman Shoes Being Discovered At Hadrian’s Wall?
  • Scientists Think They’ve Pinpointed Structural Differences In Psychopaths’ Brains
  • We’ve Found Our Third-Ever Interstellar Visitor, Orcas Filmed Kissing (With Tongues) In The Wild, And Much More This Week
  • The “Eyes Of Clavius” Will Be Visible On The Moon Today, Thanks To Clair-Obscur Effect
  • Shockingly High Microplastic Levels Found On Remote Mediterranean Coral Reef Island
  • Interstellar Object, Cheesy Nightmares, And Smooching Orcas
  • World’s Largest Martian Meteorite Up For Auction Could Reach Whopping $2-4 Million
  • Kimalu The Beluga Whale Undergoes Pioneering Surgery And Becomes First Beluga To Survive General Aesthetic
  • The 1986 Soviet Space Mission That’s Never Been Repeated: Mir To Salyut And Back Again
  • Grisly Incident In Yellowstone National Park Shows Just How Dangerous This Vibrant Wilderness Can Be
  • Out Of All Greenhouse Gas Emitters On Earth, One US Organization Takes The Biscuit
  • Overly Ambitious Adder Attempts To Eat Hare 10 Times Its Mass In Gnarly Video
  • How Fast Does A Spacecraft Need To Go To Escape The Solar System?
  • President Trump’s Cuts To USAID Could Result In A “Staggering” 14 Million Avoidable Deaths By 2030
  • Dzo: Hybrids Beasts That Are Perfectly Crafted For Life On Earth’s Highest Mountains
  • “Rarest Event Ever” Had A Half-Life 1 Trillion Times Longer Than The Age Of The Universe – How Did We See It?
  • Meet The Bille, A Self-Righting Tetrahedron That Nobody Was Sure Could Exist
  • Neurogenesis Confirmed: Adult Brains Really Do Make New Hippocampal Neurons
  • 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