The impact of the new Earth gravity models on the measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect

TL;DR

This paper evaluates how new Earth gravity models, especially those including GRACE data, affect the accuracy of measuring the Lense-Thirring effect using satellite data.

Contribution

It assesses the impact of recent gravity models on systematic errors in Lense-Thirring measurements, highlighting preliminary promising results from GGM01C.

Findings

Preliminary analysis using EIGEN2 model

Initial results from GGM01C model are promising

Gravity model improvements may reduce measurement errors

Abstract

In this paper we use, in a preliminary way, the recently released EIGEN2 Earth gravity model, which is based on six months of data of CHAMP only, in order to reassess the systematic error due to the mismodelling in the even zonal harmonics of geopotential in the LAGEOS-LAGEOS II Lense-Thirring experiment involving the nodes of both the LAGEOS satellites and the perigee of LAGEOS II. The first results from the GGM01C Earth gravity model including the first GRACE data are very promising.