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Ranging and Pioneer
In article ,
George Dishman writes: The transmitter can be switched off and on but after switching on it can take a long time to lock on. Don't think about switching the transmitter on and off. Instead command the spacecraft to continuously downlink the contents of some memory location. Now send a command to change the contents of that location, and see how long it takes for the new value to be received in downlink. As Craig wrote, a more sophisticated equivalent of this is how ranging to more modern spacecraft is done. Apparently the Pioneer hardware and software don't allow this procedure to give a useful range. Without knowing spacecraft details, it's impossible to say exactly why, but I see no reason to disbelieve the experts. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if signal strength is the major issue: how many bits/s can Pioneer send back now? That is certainly one fundamental limitation. -- Steve Willner Phone 617-495-7123 Cambridge, MA 02138 USA (Please email your reply if you want to be sure I see it; include a valid Reply-To address to receive an acknowledgement. Commercial email may be sent to your ISP.) |
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