Modelling the nongravitational acceleration during Cassini's gravitation experiments

In this paper we present a computation of the thermally generated acceleration of the Cassini probe during its solar conjunction experiment, obtained from a model of the spacecraft. We build a thermal model of the vehicle and perform a Monte Carlo simulation to find a thermal acceleration with a main component of $(3.01 \pm 0.33) \times 10^{-9} {\rm m/s^2}$. This result is in close agreement with the estimates of this effect performed through Doppler data analysis.