Overview of the LARES Mission: orbit, error analysis and technological aspects (original) (raw)
2012, Journal of Physics: Conference Series
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Scientific Aspects of LARES mission
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LARES was first presented as a response to a call for proposal issued by ASI in 1997. It is an evolution of the LAGEOS 3 proposal (1986). In February 2008 ASI provided financial support to build the LARES system that will be launched with the VEGA maiden flight in year 2010. Altitude at 6000 km with an inclination of 70 degrees (supplementary to LAGEOS I satellite) was the original proposal. With this orbit, the contribution of all the even zonal harmonics of the Earth gravitational field to the node motion of the orbit of the satellite would have been cancelled out, providing a direct measurement of the Relativistic Lense-Thirring effect (provided that all the other perturbations are well modeled). The availability of the VEGA maiden flight was an opportunity to use an alternative approach. In fact, the compromise between the scientific objectives and the launch vehicle objectives in its qualification flight was selected of a circular orbit with an altitude of 1450 km and inclinati...
Lares Mission: Engineering Aspects
Aerotecnica Missili & Spazio, 2015
LARES is a satellite of the Italian Space Agency, successfully launched with the new VEGA launcher in the occasion of its inaugural flight, VV01. It was put in a circular orbit at 1450 km altitude. This altitude was required to reduce atmospheric drag, whereas the satellite was designed to minimize the non-gravitational perturbations acting on the surface of the satellite. This was of paramount importance because the mission objective is to test Einstein general relativity, and any unmodeled effect could spoil the accuracy of the relativistic measurement. With the optimal design achieved, this non-gravitational unmodeled effects are maintained below 1% of frame-dragging or Lense-Thirring effect. This effect is the orbital node shift induced by the Earth rotation as predicted by general relativity. To achieve the accuracy required for the test, it was conceived a constellation of three laser ranged satellites (LAGEOS 1, LAGEOS 2 and LARES) along with the latest determination of the Earth gravitational field by GRACE satellite. The satellite is a passive system and embedded with 92 Cube Corner Reflectors that have the properties of reflecting back to the emitting ground station the laser pulses, thus allowing its precise orbital determination. In this paper engineering aspects of the mission will be addressed.
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