Modelling the nongravitational acceleration during Cassini's gravitation experiments
Abstract
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 0.33) × 10-9 m/s2. This result is in close agreement with the estimates of this effect performed through Doppler data analysis.
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