Testing General Relativistic Predictions with the LAGEOS Satellites

Abstract EN

The spacetime around Earth is a good environment in order to perform tests of gravitational theories.

According to Einstein’s view of gravitational phenomena, the Earth mass-energy content curves the surrounding spacetime in a peculiar way.

This (relatively) quiet dynamical environment enables a good reconstruction of geodetic satellites (test masses) orbit, provided that high-quality tracking data are available.

This is the case of the LAGEOS satellites, built and launched mainly for geodetic and geodynamical purposes, but equally good for fundamental physics studies.

A review of these studies is presented, focusing on data, models, and analysis strategies.

Some recent and less recent results are presented.

All of them indicate general relativity theory as a very good description of gravitational phenomena, at least in the studied environment.