Testing General Relativistic Predictions with the LAGEOS Satellites

Table 2

Magnitude of the main disturbing effects on the LAGEOS II spacecraft (adapted from [20]).

Effect	Estimate	Magnitude (ms^−2)
Earth’s monopole	𝐺𝑀⊕𝑟^2	2.69
Earth’s oblateness	3𝐺𝑀⊕𝑟^2𝑅⊕𝑟^2𝐶20	−1.1×10^−3
Low-order geopotential harmonics	3𝐺𝑀⊕𝑟^2𝑅⊕𝑟^2𝐶22	5.4×10^−6
High-order geopotential harmonics	19𝐺𝑀⊕𝑟^2𝑅⊕𝑟^18𝐶18,18	1.4×10^−12
Moon perturbation	2𝐺𝑀☾𝑡^3☾𝑟	2.2×10^−12
Sun perturbation	2𝐺𝑀⨀𝑟^3⨀𝑟	9.6×10^−13
General relativistic correction	𝐺𝑀⊕𝑟^2𝐺𝑀⊕𝑐^21𝑟	9.8×10^−10
Atmospheric drag	12𝐶𝐷𝐴𝑀𝜌𝑉^2	3.4×10^−12
Solar radiation pressure	𝐶𝑅𝐴𝑀Φ⨀𝑐	3.2×10^−9
Albedo radiation pressure	𝐶𝑅𝐴𝑀Φ⨀𝑐𝐴⊕𝑅⊕𝑟^2	3.5×10^−10
Thermal emission	49𝐴𝑀Φ⨀𝑐𝛼Δ𝑇𝑇0	2.8×10^−11
Dynamic solid tide	3𝑘2𝐺𝑀☾𝑟☾𝑅⊕𝑟☾^2𝑅^3⊕𝑟^4	3.7×10^−6
Dynamic ocean tide	∼0.1 of the dynamic solid tide	3.7×10^−7