Light-time computations for the BepiColombo radio science experiment

DOI10.1007/S10569-010-9273-7MaRDI QIDQ990358zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Giacomo Tommei, Andrea Milani, David Vokrouhlický

Publication date 31 August 2010

Published in Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0910.5818, http://eprints.adm.unipi.it/720/1/lt_com_eprint.pdf

zbMATH Keywords

interplanetary trackinglight-timeMercuryrangerange raterelativistic effectsShapiro effect

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Celestial mechanics (70F15) Orbital mechanics (70M20) Waves and radiation in optics and electromagnetic theory (78A40)

Abstract: The radioscience experiment is one of the on board experiment of the Mercury ESA mission BepiColombo that will be launched in 2014. The goals of the experiment are to determine the gravity field of Mercury and its rotation state, to determine the orbit of Mercury, to constrain the possible theories of gravitation (for example by determining the post-Newtonian (PN) parameters), to provide the spacecraft position for geodesy experiments and to contribute to planetary ephemerides improvement. This is possible thanks to a new technology which allows to reach great accuracies in the observables range and range rate; it is well known that a similar level of accuracy requires studying a suitable model taking into account numerous relativistic effects. In this paper we deal with the modelling of the space-time coordinate transformations needed for the light-time computations and the numerical methods adopted to avoid rounding-off errors in such computations.

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Cites work

• General post-Minkowskian expansion of time transfer functions
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 146460 (Why is no real title available?)
• Theory of orbit determination.

Cited in

(4)

• Precise formulation of the spacecraft instantaneous 1-way range-rate observable
• Investigating the role of simulations in astrophysics: the case of the orbit determination problem
• The non-gravitational perturbations impact on the BepiColombo radio science experiment and the key rôle of the ISA accelerometer: direct solar radiation and albedo effects
• ISA accelerometer onboard the Mercury Planetary Orbiter: error budget

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