Einstein’s theory of general relativity is playing an increasingly important role in fields such as interplanetary navigation,astrometry,and metrology.Modern spacecraft and interplanetary probe prediction and estimat...Einstein’s theory of general relativity is playing an increasingly important role in fields such as interplanetary navigation,astrometry,and metrology.Modern spacecraft and interplanetary probe prediction and estimation platforms employ a perturbed Newtonian framework,supplemented with the Einstein-Infeld-Hoffmann n-body equations of motion.While time in Newtonian mechanics is formally universal,the accuracy of modern radiometric tracking systems necessitate linear corrections via increasingly complex and error-prone post-Newtonian techniques—to account for light deflection due to the solar system bodies.With flagship projects such as the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission now operating at unprecedented levels of accuracy,we believe the standard corrected Newtonian paradigm is approaching its limits in terms of complexity.In this paper,we employ a novel prototype software,General Relativistic Accelerometer-based Propagation Environment,to reconstruct the Cassini cruise-phase trajectory during its first gravitational wave experiment in a fully relativistic framework.The results presented herein agree with post-processed trajectory information obtained from NASA’s SPICE kernels at the order of centimetres.展开更多
基金Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member InstitutionsJO’L acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery(OzGrav)(Grant No.CE170100004)JPB was funded by a DAR grant in planetology from the French Space Agency(CNES).
文摘Einstein’s theory of general relativity is playing an increasingly important role in fields such as interplanetary navigation,astrometry,and metrology.Modern spacecraft and interplanetary probe prediction and estimation platforms employ a perturbed Newtonian framework,supplemented with the Einstein-Infeld-Hoffmann n-body equations of motion.While time in Newtonian mechanics is formally universal,the accuracy of modern radiometric tracking systems necessitate linear corrections via increasingly complex and error-prone post-Newtonian techniques—to account for light deflection due to the solar system bodies.With flagship projects such as the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission now operating at unprecedented levels of accuracy,we believe the standard corrected Newtonian paradigm is approaching its limits in terms of complexity.In this paper,we employ a novel prototype software,General Relativistic Accelerometer-based Propagation Environment,to reconstruct the Cassini cruise-phase trajectory during its first gravitational wave experiment in a fully relativistic framework.The results presented herein agree with post-processed trajectory information obtained from NASA’s SPICE kernels at the order of centimetres.
