General Relativity Measurements in the Field of Earth with Laser-Ranged Satellites: State of the Art and Perspectives

Recent results of the LARASE research program in terms of model improvements and relativistic measurements are presented. In particular, the results regarding the development of new models for the non-gravitational perturbations that affect the orbit of the LAGEOS and LARES satellites are described...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Universe (Basel) 2019-06, Vol.5 (6), p.141
Main Authors: Lucchesi, David, Anselmo, Luciano, Bassan, Massimo, Magnafico, Carmelo, Pardini, Carmen, Peron, Roberto, Pucacco, Giuseppe, Visco, Massimo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Earth
general relativity
Geodetics
Geophysics
Ground stations
LAGEOS satellites
Lasers
Lense-Thirring effect
Orbits
perturbations
Physics
satellite laser ranging
Satellites
Spacetime
Theory of relativity
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Recent results of the LARASE research program in terms of model improvements and relativistic measurements are presented. In particular, the results regarding the development of new models for the non-gravitational perturbations that affect the orbit of the LAGEOS and LARES satellites are described and discussed. These are subtle and complex effects that need a deep knowledge of the structure and the physical characteristics of the satellites in order to be correctly accounted for. In the field of gravitational measurements, we present a new measurement of the relativistic Lense-Thirring precession with a 0.5 % precision. In this measurement, together with the relativistic effect we also estimated two even zonal harmonics coefficients. The uncertainties of the even zonal harmonics of the gravitational field of the Earth have been responsible, until now, of the larger systematic uncertainty in the error budget of this kind of measurements. For this reason, the role of the errors related to the model used for the gravitational field of the Earth in these measurements is discussed. In particular, emphasis is given to GRACE temporal models, that strongly help to reduce this kind of systematic errors.
ISSN:2218-1997
2218-1997
DOI:10.3390/universe5060141