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Please Provide Feedback Please Support the Scholarworks@UMBC This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law. Access to this work was provided by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) ScholarWorks@UMBC digital repository on the Maryland Shared Open Access (MD-SOAR) platform. Please provide feedback Please support the ScholarWorks@UMBC repository by emailing [email protected] and telling us what having access to this work means to you and why it’s important to you. Thank you. Contribution of LARES and Geodetic Satellites on Environmental Monitoring Erricos C. Pavlis Giampiero Sindoni Goddard Earth Science and Technology Center Dipartimento di Ingegneria Astronautica Elettrica Energetica (GEST/UMBC), University of Maryland, Sapienza Universita` di Roma Baltimore County NASA Goddard Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Antonio Paolozzi Ignazio Ciufolini Scuola di Ingegneria Aerospaziale and DIAEE Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’ Innovazione, Sapienza Universita` di Roma Universita` del Salento and Centro Fermi, Roma and Centro Fermi, Roma Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Abstract—LARES is the latest laser ranged geodetic satellite data analysis it was observed that LARES behaves as the best launched in orbit. It is an Italian Space Agency mission devoted test particle ever put in orbit. This, as will be shown later, is an mainly to test fundamental physics. However, it will be shown important characteristic not only for fundamental physics but in the present paper that it will also contribute significantly to also in geodesy and geodynamics. A quantitative estimation of Earth science. The use of LARES together with the constellation the actual contribution of Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) and of the other geodetic satellites will provide improvements in in particular of LARES to geodesy and geodynamics is not the measurement of the gravity field of Earth including its temporal variation measurements. In particular the latter carries easy yet. In fact the solution for Earth science applications signatures of mass redistribution due to several phenomena uses a combination of data not only from several different including global atmospheric and oceanic circulation, useful not satellites but also from other geodetic space techniques such as, only for monitoring global climate change but also to provide a Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), the Global Navi- means for climate model validation. gation Satellite System (GNSS) constellations and the French system DORIS (Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite). The preliminary results reported in I. INTRODUCTION [13] are quite remarkable, indicating the inclusion of LARES The LARES mission [1] was derived from the LAGEOS 3 data in purely SLR-ONLY solution results in an improvement proposal that was prepared based on the studies performed in of more than 20% in the station positions with an improvement [2]. The first approval for a phase A study of LARES mission on their stability of near 30%. A similar improvement in Earth was given by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) back in 1998, Orientation Parameters (EOP) and estimates of the low-degree but the approval of the executive program (phases B to D) gravitational harmonics has also been observed. Contributions came 10 years later, when the VEGA launcher development from several fields: geodesy, geodynamics, geophysics, mete- was in its final stage. The main objective of the mission is to orology and oceanography are necessary to obtain meaningful measure frame-dragging [3]–[5], one of the many predictions results and to break the correlations of various small systematic of general relativity: currents of mass and energy will distort errors that are always present in each of the observational space-time similarly to what happens, but generally to a bigger geodetic techniques. Each component of the Earth System acts extent, with mass and energy itself. The first measurements of in different time-scales and periodicities. EOP for example is this effect have been performed in [6] and improved a few affected by surface rearrangement of masses in the atmosphere, years later [7]. That result was achieved by using data from ocean and hydrological environment, but it is also affected the two LAGEOS satellites launched by NASA in 1976 and at much longer time-scales by redistribution of masses inside NASA and ASI in 1992 respectively, reaching an accuracy of Earth. As mentioned in [14] the effects of the atmosphere about 10%, confirmed also in [8]. Later on, also an independent on the EOP can be done either by evaluating the torques experiment, determined frame dragging with an accuracy of applied by the atmosphere to the Earth [15] or by evaluating about 19% by measuring the drift of four gyroscopes inside the variations of the atmospheric angular momentum on polar the Gravity Probe B spacecraft [9]. With the third satellite motion and on the Length Of Day (LOD) [16]. The importance LARES, placed in orbit on 13th February 2012 [10], it is of EOP in global environmental monitoring is addressed by expected to reach an accuracy at the level of 1% [11], [12] several papers such as in [17] just to mention one. Correlations in a time span of about seven years after launch. This long between EOP and global climate variability has been studied period of time is required to average out some periodical in [18]. In [14] the effects of the atmosphere on polar motion orbital perturbations unrelated to relativity. From preliminary and LOD is considered. There are obvious difficulties in separating the effects of the atmosphere from those due to the 978-1-4799-7993-6/15/$31.00 c 2015 IEEE Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Maryland Baltimore Cty. Downloaded on October 09,2020 at 16:06:27 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply. oceans, hydrology and internal mass redistribution. However of LARES was performed minimizing this value and thus the effect of the atmosphere seems to be prevalent. Similarly obtaining an object with an orbit that best approximates the the fluctuations in LOD are due not only to angular momentum geodesic in spacetime [21]. The choice of using a single piece variation on the atmosphere, but also to ocean etc of tungsten alloy for the satellite body had a further beneficial effect on reducing thermal thrust, a tiny but measureable non- II. LARES SYSTEM gravitational perturbation [22] that has been observed on the other cannoball satellites. An alternative design for reducing When the qualification launch of VEGA was announced, this perturbation was proposed in [23] but that design was not LARES was first accepted on board. Later the educational as good for the minimization of the other non-gravitational program of ESA involved seven Cubesats. These are standard perturbations. cube-shaped nanosatellites of 10 cm edge-size and a mass of about 1 kg. A microsatellite, ALMASat, from the University of Bologna was also added to the mission. All these payloads B. The separation and support system were fit on the VEGA payload attachment system called The LARES separation system, visible in Fig. 1 just below LARES system where central role had LARES, as shown in the satellite, has been specifically designed for LARES. The Fig. 1. main requirement, besides that concerning the structural in- tegrity of the satellite and the separation system during launch, was to avoid the need of protruding parts on the satellite at the interface points. The solution adopted was to rely on the force (about 17000 N) exerted by each one of the four hemispherical pins on the corresponding four hemispherical equatorial cavities. The pressure at the contact point was close to the admissible limit of the satellite tungsten alloy. It was therefore required to check experimentally if this separation system design was feasible [24]. The final separation test demonstrated the validity of the design [25]. III. SATELLITE LASER RANGING Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) was first tried and success- fully tested at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on October 31, 1964, shortly after the invention of lasers. Since then the technology has evolved tremendously and has enabled ranging to the Moon and to transponders on spacecraft orbiting other planets (e.g. Mars). The key technology for laser ranging is provided by an international network of ground stations coordi- nated by the International Laser Ranging Service (ILRS) [26]. The current network comprises about 60 stations distributed all over the world Fig. (2), however, there are only about 40 active stations and of these 50% are the ones providing the bulk of the tracking data routinely. Fig. 1. LARES System. (Credits ESA, CNES, Arianespace, Optique video du CSG, L. Mira) Extremely short (∼10-300 ps) laser pulses are transmitted at various rates (10 Hz to 10 kHz) through a telescope toward the targets. An extremely accurate counter or an event timer A. The LARES satellite payload allows to measure the round-trip time of flight with extreme accuracy thus providing single-shot distance measurements The LARES satellite is a sphere with a radius of 182 mm with an accuracy of a few millimeters. Laser ranging data (top in 1) covered with 92 Cube Corner Retroreflectors (CCRs) acquired at each station are initially preprocessed locally at [19]. It is manufactured from a single piece of tungsten alloy the stations, forming the so-called Normal Points (NPs), by [20]. It is totally passive i.e., there is no attitude control, averaging the data over pre-specified time intervals determined power supply, antennas, active thermal control, propulsion, on the basis of the altitude of the targets, to suppress random or telecommanding involved.
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