Some comments about a recent paper on the measurement of the general relativistic Lense-Thirring effect in the gravitational field of the Earth with the laser-ranged LAGEOS and LAGEOS II satellites

TL;DR

This paper critiques a recent measurement of the Earth's Lense-Thirring effect using LAGEOS satellites, highlighting potential underestimations of error sources and suggesting a more realistic error margin of 15-45%.

Contribution

It provides a critical analysis of the error assessment in the previous measurement, emphasizing the importance of secular variations of Earth's geopotential.

Findings

Original error estimates may be overly optimistic.

Realistic error margins are between 15-45%.

Underestimation of secular variations impacts the measurement accuracy.

Abstract

In this brief note some comments about the observable used in a recently published paper on the measurement of the general relativistic Lense-Thirring in the gravitational field of the Earth are presented. It turns out that, among other things, the authors might have yielded an optimistic evaluation of the error budget because of an underestimation of the impact of the secular variations of the even zonal harmonics of the geopotential. More realistic evaluations point towards a 15-45% error at 1-3sigma level, respectively.