![]() Anderson synthesized that headache’s worth of cosmic influences into a single algorithm. Contributing factors to the predicted Doppler shift included: the deceleration experienced by the Pioneers as they struggled against the gravitational pull of the sun, planets, moons, asteroid belts, and comet clouds, the positions and thus gravitational fields of which move constantly the tiny push on the spacecraft by the sun’s radiation, which weakened with time as the spacecraft moved progressively farther away, and also changed as the angle of the spacecraft changed the increase in the delay time between the bounce of a radio wave and its reception back at Earth as the spacecraft grew more distant the gravitational drag on the radio waves from the sun the additional frequency shift in the radio transmissions caused by the rotation of the Earth… and the list goes on. Of course, in order to detect such curiosities in the motion of the spacecraft, the scientists needed to know exactly what to expect in the first place this required the construction of an algorithm of truly staggering complexity. It was thought, for example, that the Pioneers might oscillate in tune with low-frequency gravity waves. He and his team intended to use the data to study subtle gravitational effects in the outer solar system, far from the overwhelming influences of the sun and larger planets. An astronomer named John Anderson led the analysis of the Doppler ranging data. They sent and received a continuous stream of radio transmissions to and from both Pioneers, logging the velocity of each everywhere along its trajectory. JPL scientists continued Doppler tracking the Pioneers far into deep space.
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