Related papers: Radio Science Investigation on a Mercury Orbiter M…
Due to its relatively large eccentricity and proximity to the Sun, Mercury's orbital motion provides one of the best solar-system tests of relativistic gravity. We emphasize the number of feasible relativistic gravity tests that can be…
We analyze radio tracking data obtained during 1311 orbits of the MESSENGER spacecraft in the period March 2011 to April 2014. A least-squares minimization of the residuals between observed and computed values of two-way range and Doppler…
The possibility of measuring the post-Newtonian gravitoelectric correction to the orbital period of a test particle freely orbiting a spherically symmetric mass in the Solar System is analyzed. It should be possible, in principle, to detect…
The Mercury Orbiter radio Science Experiment (MORE) is one of the experiments on-board the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury, to be launched in October 2018. Thanks to full on-board and on-ground instrumentation performing very…
The Mercury Orbiter radio Science Experiment (MORE) is one of the experiments on-board the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury, to be launched in October 2018. Thanks to full on-board and on-ground instrumentation performing very…
In general relativity, the Mercury's orbit becomes approximately elliptical and the its perihelion has thus an additional advance. We demonstrate, meanwhile, that in comparison of those given by the Newton's theory of gravitation for the…
The current knowledge of Mercury orbit has mainly been gained by direct radar ranging obtained from the 60s to 1998 and by five Mercury flybys made by Mariner 10 in the 70s, and MESSENGER made in 2008 and 2009. On March 18, 2011, MESSENGER…
In this paper we represent a different approach to the calculation of the perihelion shift than the one presented in common text books. We do not rely on the Schwarzschild metric and the Hamilton Jacobi technique to obtain our results.…
We present a novel solution of the Mercury perihelion advance shift in the new gravity model. It is found that the non-relativistic reduction of the Dirac equation with the gravitational potential produces the new gravitational potential of…
As an end-member of terrestrial planet formation, Mercury holds unique clues about the original distribution of elements in the earliest stages of solar system development and how planets and exoplanets form and evolve in close proximity to…
We point out the existence of a new general relativistic contribution to the perihelion advance of Mercury that, while smaller than the contributions arising from the solar quadrupole moment and angular momentum, is 100 times larger than…
The 3:2 spin-orbit resonance between the rotational and orbital motions of Mercury results from a functional dependance on a tidal friction adding to a non-zero eccentricity with a permanent asymmetry in the equatorial plane of the planet.…
Context: Active stars possess magnetized wind that has a direct impact on planets that can lead to radio emission. Mercury is a good test case to study the effect of the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field on radio emission driven…
BepiColombo is a joint ESA/JAXA mission to Mercury with challenging objectives regarding geophysics, geodesy and fundamental physics. The Mercury Orbiter Radioscience Experiment (MORE) is one of the on-board experiments, including three…
The perihelion advance of the orbit of Mercury has long been one of the observational cornerstones for testing General Relativity (G.R.). The main goal of this paper is to discuss how, presently, observational and theoretical constraints…
The upcoming space missions, MESSENGER and BepiColombo with onboard instrumentation capable of measuring the rotational parameters stimulate the objective to reach an accurate theory of the rotational motion of Mercury. For obtaining the…
We numerically and analytically work out the first-order post-Newtonian (1pN) orbital effects induced on the semimajor axis $a$, the eccentricity $e$, the inclination $I$, the longitude of the ascending node $\Omega$, the longitude of…
The work is devoted to the critical analysis of theoretical prediction and astronomical observation of GR effects, first of all, the Mercury's perihelion advance. In the first part, the methodological issues of observations are discussed…
This work presents the simulation results of the radio science experiment onboard the proposed Heavy Metal mission to the M-type asteroid (216) Kleopatra. Earth-based radiometric measurements (range and range-rate), complemented by images…
In 1859, Le Verrier discovered the Mercury perihelion advance anomaly. This anomaly turned out to be the first relativistic-gravity effect observed. During the 157 years to 2016, the precisions and accuracies of laboratory and space…