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

TL;DR

This paper explores how new Earth gravity models from CHAMP and GRACE missions can enhance the measurement of the Lense-Thirring relativistic effect, analyzing the impact of model inaccuracies on the measurement precision.

Contribution

It provides a preliminary assessment of how upcoming gravity models could reduce systematic errors in measuring the Lense-Thirring effect.

Findings

Preliminary evaluation of EIGEN2 and GRACE01S models.

Mismodelling in even zonal harmonics impacts measurement accuracy.

Potential for improved Lense-Thirring measurement with new models.

Abstract

We examine how the new forthcoming Earth gravity models from the CHAMP and, especially, GRACE missions could improve the measurement of the general relativistic Lense-Thirring effect according to the various kinds of observables which could be adopted. In a very preliminary way, we use the recently released EIGEN2 CHAMP-only and GRACE01S GRACE-only Earth gravity models in order to assess the impact of the mismodelling in the even zonal harmonic coefficients of geopotential which represents one of the major sources of systematic errors in this kind of measurement.