A comment on the paper "On the orbit of the LARES satellite", by I. Ciufolini

TL;DR

This paper critically examines a recent claim that a low-altitude, nearly polar LARES satellite could measure the Lense-Thirring effect with minimal error, finding the actual systematic error to be significantly larger than claimed.

Contribution

The authors provide a detailed analysis showing that the systematic error in measuring the Lense-Thirring effect with LARES is much higher than previously claimed, challenging prior assertions.

Findings

Systematic error could reach 64% of the relativistic effect.

The claimed near-zero error at 4° inclination is not supported by the analysis.

The Earth's gravity model used does not reduce errors as previously suggested.

Abstract

In this note we comment on a recent paper by I.Ciufolini about the possibility of placing the proposed terrestrial satellite LARES in a low-altitude, nearly polar orbit in order to measure the general relativistic Lense-Thirring effect with its node. Ciufolini claims that, for a departure of 4 deg in the satellite's inclination $i$ from the ideal polar configuration (i=90 deg), the impact of the errors in the even zonal harmonics of the geopotential, modelled with EIGEN-GRACE02S, would be nearly zero allowing for a few-percent measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect. Instead, we find that, with the same Earth gravity model and for the same values of the inclination, the upper bound of the systematic error due to the mismodelling in the even zonals amounts to 64% of the relativistic effect investigated.