The LARASE research program. State of the art on modelling and measurements of general relativity effects in the field of the Earth: A preliminary measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect

Abstract

The LARASE research program is funded by the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics and it is a collaboration between different institutions. LARASE aims to provide very precise and accurate measurements of the General Relativity effects that perturb, from the Newtonian point of view, the trajectory of a satellite orbiting the Earth. The improvements obtained by the LARASE collaboration with respect to the previous year are presented in terms of orbit modelling, precise orbit determination and a preliminary measurement of the Lense-Thirring precession. A preliminary and partial estimate of the corresponding error budget is given and it is discussed with the main difficulties present, and to overcome in order to provide a definitive, robust and reliable estimate of the main systematic sources of error.