LARES is an Italian Space Agency spherical passive satellite that will test Einstein General Relativity. LARES is about 400 kg in weight and is built with an extremely dense material. This characteristic will make LARES the single known object with the highest mean density in the solar system. This property will allow to drastically reduce the errors in the estimate of the effects of the non gravitational perturbation on the LARES orbit. That, together with the accurate knowledge of the Earth gravitational field and with the laser ranging technique, will allow to obtain the measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect predicted by General Relativity. LARES will be the main payload of the new VEGA launcher. The launch is foreseen in the second half of year 2011. One of the main challenges of the engineering aspects of the mission was the application of the pre-load on the satellite and a way of measuring it. Also due to the high values of this pre-load verification of the pressures applied on the satellite surface by the separation system was needed. In this paper the measurement techniques will be shown, i.e., conventional resistive strain gages and fiber optic sensor. Also a brief overview of the mission will be reported.
Contribution of strain measurements to the LARES satellite mission
CIUFOLINI, Ignazio;
2011-01-01
Abstract
LARES is an Italian Space Agency spherical passive satellite that will test Einstein General Relativity. LARES is about 400 kg in weight and is built with an extremely dense material. This characteristic will make LARES the single known object with the highest mean density in the solar system. This property will allow to drastically reduce the errors in the estimate of the effects of the non gravitational perturbation on the LARES orbit. That, together with the accurate knowledge of the Earth gravitational field and with the laser ranging technique, will allow to obtain the measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect predicted by General Relativity. LARES will be the main payload of the new VEGA launcher. The launch is foreseen in the second half of year 2011. One of the main challenges of the engineering aspects of the mission was the application of the pre-load on the satellite and a way of measuring it. Also due to the high values of this pre-load verification of the pressures applied on the satellite surface by the separation system was needed. In this paper the measurement techniques will be shown, i.e., conventional resistive strain gages and fiber optic sensor. Also a brief overview of the mission will be reported.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
