Pioneer 10 and 11 orbit determination analysis shows no discrepancy with Newton-Einstein laws of gravity

The present work describes our investigation of the navigation anomaly of the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes which became known as the Pioneer Anomaly. It appeared as a linear drift in the Doppler data received by the spacecraft, which has been ascribed to an approximately constant Sunward acceleration of about 8.5×10-13km/s2. Since then, the existence of the anomaly has been confirmed independently by several groups and a large effort was devoted to find its origin. Recently, different analyses were published where the authors claimed the acceleration due to anisotropic thermal emission to be the most likely cause of the unexplained acceleration. Here we report the methodology and the results of an independent study carried out in the last years, aimed at supporting the thermal origin of the anomaly. This work consists of two main parts: thermal modeling of the spacecraft throughout its trajectory, and orbit determination analysis. Based on existing documentation and published telemetry data, we built a thermal finite element model of the spacecraft, whose complexity has been constrained to a degree allowing for sensitivity analysis, leading to the computation of its formal uncertainty. The trajectory analysis and orbit determination were carried out using NASA/JPL's Orbit Determination Program, and our results show that orbital solutions are achieved that do not require the addition of any "unknown" acceleration other than that of thermal origin.