A comment on the paper "On the orbit of the LARES satellite", by I. Ciufolini

Abstract

In this note we comment on a recent paper by I.Ciufolini about the possibility of placing the proposed terrestrial satellite LARES in a low-altitude, nearly polar orbit in order to measure the general relativistic Lense-Thirring effect with its node. Ciufolini claims that, for a departure of 4 deg in the satellite's inclination $i$ from the ideal polar configuration (i=90 deg), the impact of the errors in the even zonal harmonics of the geopotential, modelled with EIGEN-GRACE02S, would be nearly zero allowing for a few-percent measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect. Instead, we find that, with the same Earth gravity model and for the same values of the inclination, the upper bound of the systematic error due to the mismodelling in the even zonals amounts to 64% of the relativistic effect investigated.

arXiv commentLaTex, 7 pages, no figures, 1 table. It refers to gr-qc/0609081 by I. Ciufolini. Quotation from such paper added: in it Ciufolini explicitly claims that his nearly polar LARES would be sufficient, without using LAGEOS and LAGEOS II. Typos corrected. Reference added. Style improved. Clarifications added. To appear in Planetary and Space Science

References in corpus (5)

• The impact of the static part of the Earth's gravity field on some tests of General Relativity with Satellite Laser Ranging
• The impact of the new Earth gravity models on the measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect with a new satellite
• A critical approach to the concept of a polar, low-altitude LARES satellite
• On the orbit of the LARES satellite
• On the impossibility of using the longitude of the ascending node of GP-B for measuring the Lense-Thirring effect

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Phenomenology of the Lense-Thirring effect in the Solar System
• An Assessment of the Systematic Uncertainty in Present and Future Tests of the Lense-Thirring Effect with Satellite Laser Ranging
• Will the recently approved LARES mission be able to measure the Lense-Thirring effect at 1%?
• Conservative evaluation of the uncertainty in the LAGEOS-LAGEOS II Lense-Thirring test
• LARES/WEBER-SAT and the equivalence principle