On the elements of the Earth's ellipsoid of inertia

TL;DR

This paper determines Earth's moments of inertia using satellite geopotential data, revealing the inertia pole's proximity to the CIO and improving previous estimates of Earth's inertia elements.

Contribution

It introduces a new method to calculate Earth's inertia elements from satellite data and refines previous results with higher accuracy.

Findings

Inertia pole is near the Conventional International Origin.

Orientation of Earth's inertia ellipsoid is characterized for nine models.

Results improve upon previous inertia estimates.

Abstract

By using the data for the known geopotential models by means of artificial satellite, the central moments of inertia of the Earth are determined. For this purpose, it was used the value $H = 0.00327369\pm9.8\cdot10^{-8}$ for dynamical flattening of the Earth [I. MIHAILA, A.D. V\^{I}LCU, On the value of the dynamical flattening of the Earth (to appear)]. The results obtained indicate that the pole of inertia is located near the Conventional International Origin (CIO). Also, the orientation of the triaxial ellipsoid of inertia for nine geopotential models considered is given. Our results improve the ones obtained by Erzhanov and Kalybaev [General theory of the rotation of the Earth, Nauka, Moscow, 1984 (in Russian)].