(OT) Re: Rescue of data from Pioneer 10 & 11 tapes at JPL needed

[Mark Tapley]

At 12:00 -0500 6/8/05, Bill Dawson wrote (quoted from a website):
>"With the spacecraft now silent, we cannot expect future data,
>so we must look to the past. In fact, there are hundreds of
>tapes containing data taken before 1987, when the spacecraft
>were between 10 and 40 AU from the Sun. This data from the time
>the Pioneers were still in the midst of this planetary realm
>could be crucial to solving the anomaly.

We can expect future data. The New Horizons 
mission should launch in January 2006 and zip by 
pluto in July 2015 if all goes well. Of course, 
it's not a JPL mission, but the data should be 
equally relevant.

Nevertheless, considering the cost/bit of the 
Pioneer data, if there is any chance of 
recovering it, serious effort should be made to 
do so.

FWIW, a paper describing the anomalous acceleration is at

PHYSICAL REVIEW D, VOLUME 65, 082004
Study of the anomalous acceleration of Pioneer 10 
and 11 John D. Anderson,1,* Philip A. Laing,2,Ý 
Eunice L. Lau,1,ý Anthony S. Liu,3,§ Michael 
Martin Nieto,4,i
and Slava G. Turyshev1,¶
1Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute 
of Technology, Pasadena, California 91109

and I have a .pdf copy of that paper, if anyone 
is interested (unless, of course, anyone from 
Physical Review D asks me not to pass it on).
-- 
					- Mark
			210-522-6025, temporary cell 240-375-2995