How to reach a few percent level in determining the Lense-Thirring effect?

TL;DR

This paper compares two satellite-based methods for measuring the Lense-Thirring effect, analyzing their sensitivities and potential for achieving a few percent accuracy using the latest Earth gravity models.

Contribution

It introduces and evaluates two node-only satellite combinations with different sensitivities to gravitational and non-gravitational perturbations for precise Lense-Thirring measurement.

Findings

The second combination cancels key gravitational harmonics but is affected by non-gravitational forces.

The first combination is less sensitive to non-conservative forces but affected by secular variations.

Using the new Earth gravity model improves the potential accuracy of measurements.

Abstract

In this paper we discuss and compare a node-only LAGEOS-LAGEOS II combination and a node-only LAGEOS-LAGEOS II-Ajisai-Jason1 combination for the determination of the Lense-Thirring effect. The new combined EIGEN-CG01C Earth gravity model has been adopted. The second combination cancels the first three even zonal harmonics along with their secular variations but introduces the non-gravitational perturbations of Jason1. The first combination is less sensitive to the non-conservative forces but is sensitive to the secular variations of the uncancelled even zonal harmonics of low degree J4 and J6 whose impact grows linearly in time.