Tests of fundamental physics with the GAIA mission
Abstract
With a launch scheduled in late 2012, the ESA Gaia mission will perform a systematic survey of the whole sky several times during its operational five years. It will provide high-accurate data of solar-system objects including the positions of about 250 000 asteroids with an unprecedented precision (at the sub-milliarcsecond level). Opportunities are thus arisen in carrying out various tests of fundamental physics from the dynamics of minor planets. Here we present the future performance of Gaia in estimating a set of global parameters which are, the PPN parameters β and γ , the dynamic solar quadrupole J2, the variation of the gravitational constant and the Nordtvedt parameter (test of the Strong Equivalence Principle). The expected precisions were obtained from simulations taking into account the time sequences and geometry of the observations peculiar to Gaia as well as the astrometric precision of the future measurements for about 230,000 asteroids.
- Publication:
-
Journées Systèmes de Référence Spatio-temporels 2010
- Pub Date:
- October 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011jsrs.conf..266M