English

On a correlation among azimuthal velocities and the flyby anomaly sign

Space Physics 2017-04-19 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

Data of six flybys, those of Galileo I, Galileo II, NEAR, Cassini, Rosetta and Messenger were reported by Anderson et al \citep{Anderson}. Four of them: Galileo I, NEAR, Rosetta and Messenger gain Newtonian energy during the flyby transfer, while Galileo II and Cassini lose energy. This is, in both cases, a surprising anomaly since Newtonian forces derive from a potential and they are, therefore, conservative. We show here that the gravitational field of a rotating planet as derived from a new model introduces a non conservative force that gives a partial, but in our opinion satisfactory, explanation of these anomalies and suggests a correlation between the sign of the anomaly and the sign of the azimuthal velocity at perigee.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1602.03669,
  title  = {On a correlation among azimuthal velocities and the flyby anomaly sign},
  author = {L. Acedo and Ll. Bel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.03669},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

12 pages, 3 figures