On the impossibility of using certain existing spacecraft for the measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect in the terrestrial gravitational field

2005/08/02 by Lorenzo Iorio, Iorio, Lorenzo
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #Calibration and Measurement Techniques #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #Geophysics and Gravity Measurements #Space Physics (physics.space-ph) #Statistical and numerical algorithms #astro-ph #gr-qc #physics.space-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.gr-qc/0508012

LaTex2e, 13 pages, no figures, no tables, 31 references. Reference added, Section 2.4 added

openalex publication_date 2005/08/02 · arxiv created 2005/08/03 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

In the context of the currently ongoing efforts to improve the accuracy and reliability of the measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect in the gravitational field of the Earth it has recently been proposed to use the data from the existing spacecraft endowed with some active mechanisms of compensation of the non-gravitational accelerations like GRACE. In this paper we critically discuss this interesting possibility. Unfortunately, it turns out to be unpracticable because of the impact of the uncancelled even zonal harmonic coefficients of the multipolar expansion of the terrestrial gravitational potential and of some time-dependent tidal perturbations which would resemble as superimposed linear trends over the necessarily limited observational time span of the analysis.

Citations

• The Impact of the Static Part of the Earth's Gravity Field on Some Tests of General Relativity with Satellite Laser Ranging
• On the measurement of the Lense–Thirring effect using the nodes of the LAGEOS satellites, in reply to “On the reliability of the so-far performed tests for measuring the Lense–Thirring effect with the LAGEOS satellites” by L. Iorio
• A critical approach to the concept of a polar, low-altitude LARES satellite

Related

• Towards a few-percent measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect with the LAGEOS and LAGEOS II satellites?
• An improved measurement of the Lense-Thirring precession on the orbits of laser-ranged satellites with an accuracy approaching the 1% level
• Some comments about a recent paper on the measurement of the general relativistic Lense-Thirring effect in the gravitational field of the Earth with the laser-ranged LAGEOS and LAGEOS II satellites
• Some comments on the recent results about the measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect in the gravitational field of the Earth with the LAGEOS and LAGEOS II satellites
• On the mean anomaly and the Lense-Thirring effect