On Possible A-Priori “Imprinting” of General Relativity Itself on the Performed Lense-Thirring Tests with LAGEOS Satellites

Lorenzo Iorio

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DOI: 10.4236/cn.2010.21003                

Abstract

The impact of possible a-priori “imprinting” effects of general relativity itself on recent attempts to measure the general relativistic Lense-Thirring effect with the LAGEOS satellites orbiting the Earth and the terrestrial geopotential models from the dedicated mission GRACE is investigated. It is analytically shown that general relativity, not explicitly solved for in the GRACE-based models, may “imprint” their even zonal harmonic coeffi-cients of low degrees at a non-negligible level, given the present-day accuracy in recovering them. This trans-lates into a bias of the LAGEOS-based relativistic tests as large as the Lense-Thirring effect itself. Further analyses should include general relativity itself in the GRACE data processing by explicitly solving for it.

Keywords

experimental studies of gravity, satellite orbits, harmonics of the gravity potential field

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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