Constraining the Nordtvedt parameter with the BepiColombo Radioscience experiment

Abstract

BepiColombo is a joint ESA/JAXA mission to Mercury with challenging objectives regarding geophysics, geodesy and fundamental physics. The Mercury Orbiter Radioscience Experiment (MORE) is one of the on-board experiments, including three different but linked experiments: gravimetry, rotation and relativity. The aim of the relativity experiment is the measurement of the post-Newtonian parameters. Thanks to accurate tracking between Earth and spacecraft, the results are expected to be very precise. However, the outcomes of the experiment strictly depends on our "knowledge" about solar system: ephemerides, number of bodies (planets, satellites and asteroids) and their masses. In this paper we describe a semi-analytic model used to perform a covariance analysis to quantify the effects, on the relativity experiment, due to the uncertainties of solar system bodies parameters. In particular, our attention is focused on the Nordtvedt parameter $\eta$ used to parametrize the strong equivalence principle violation. After our analysis we estimated $\sigma [\eta ]⪅4.5\times 10^{-5}$ which is about 1~order of magnitude larger than the "ideal" case where masses of planets and asteroids have no errors. The current value, obtained from ground based experiments and lunar laser ranging measurements, is $\sigma [\eta ]\approx 4.4\times 10^{-4}$. Therefore, we conclude that, even in presence of uncertainties on solar system parameters, the measurement of $\eta$ by MORE can improve the current precision of about 1~order of magnitude.

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Neutrino oscillations in extended theories of gravity
• Testing Theories of Gravity with Planetary Ephemerides
• Testing General Relativity in the Solar System: present and future perspectives
• The 1/c expansion of nonminimally coupled curvature-matter gravity model and constraints from planetary precession
• Addressing some critical aspects of the BepiColombo MORE relativity experiment
• Orbit determination methods for interplanetary missions: development and use of the Orbit14 software
• Classical and relativistic n-body problem: from Levi-Civita to the most advanced interplanetary missions
• Space tests of the strong equivalence principle: BepiColombo and the Sun-Earth Lagrangian points opportunity