On the Annual and Diurnal Variations of the Anomalous Acceleration of Pioneer 10

An apparent anomalous acceleration of about 8 × 10 –8 cm/s 2 (directed towards the Sun) has been detected in the Doppler residuals of Pioneer 10 and 11. A considerable amount of effort has been made in searching for a conclusive origin of this apparent acceleration, however, without success till date. Detailed study of the data has revealed that an annual and a daily variation of the data exist and these can be interpreted as the fluctuating components of the apparent acceleration superimposed on the steady anomalous acceleration. Since these components are definitely related to the Earths motion an explanation has been found for these annual and diurnal fluctuations. The doppler effects due to the motions of the Earth are already incorporated in the model; there should thus be no residual redshift present in the results. It has been shown that the excess redshift of the signal between the Earth and Pioneer 10 due to inertial induction can manifest itself as the apparent acceleration of the spacecraft. It has been shown that the annual and the diurnal components can be accounted for by the excess redshifts due to inertial induction. Both the magnitude and the temporal phase match with the observation