Solar system expansion and strong equivalence principle as seen by the NASA MESSENGER mission
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Author(s)
Mazarico, Erwan
Goossens, Sander
Lemoine, Frank G.
Neumann, Gregory A.
Genova, Antonio
Zuber, Maria
Smith, David Edmund
Date Issued
January 2018
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Genova, Antonio et al. “Solar System Expansion and Strong Equivalence Principle as Seen by the NASA MESSENGER Mission.” Nature Communications 9, 1 (January 2018): 289 © 2018 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The NASA MESSENGER mission explored the innermost planet of the solar system and obtained a rich data set of range measurements for the determination of Mercury's ephemeris. Here we use these precise data collected over 7 years to estimate parameters related to general relativity and the evolution of the Sun. These results confirm the validity of the strong equivalence principle with a significantly refined uncertainty of the Nordtvedt parameter η = (-6.6 ± 7.2) × 10⁻⁵. By assuming a metric theory of gravitation, we retrieved the post-Newtonian parameter β = 1 + (-1.6 ± 1.8) × 10⁻⁵ and the Sun's gravitational oblateness, J₂⊙ = (2.246 ± 0.022) × 10⁻⁷. Finally, we obtain an estimate of the time variation of the Sun gravitational parameter, GM⊙/ GM⊙ = (-6.13 ± 1.47) × 10⁻¹⁴, which is consistent with the expected solar mass loss due to the solar wind and interior processes. This measurement allows us to constrain |G'|G to be < 4 × 10⁻¹⁴ per year.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/S41467-017-02558-1
