Bremen 2017 – scientific programme

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GR: Fachverband Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie

GR 8: Experimentelle Tests 1

GR 8.3: Talk

Wednesday, March 15, 2017, 09:50–10:10, SFG 0140

Testing the gravitational redshift with Galileo satellites 5 and 6 — •Sven Herrmann, Felix Finke, Daniela Knickmann, Claus Lämmerzahl, Meike List, and Benny Rievers — ZARM, Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity, University Bremen

The satellites Galileo 5 and 6 of the European GNSS launched in August 2014 have not reached their targeted circular orbit at around 22.000 km height. Instead, their orbits possess an eccentricity of about 0.16 and the satellites undergo a change in height of about 8000 km each orbit. While this is of some disadvantage for navigation purposes it offers a unique possibility to perform a precise test of the gravitational redshift predicted by General Relativity. Thus, with support from DLR (RELAGAL) and ESA (GREAT), we have started an activity to analyze the clock and orbit data from these two Galileo satellites, to investigate whether an improved test over the result from Vessot and Levines GPA experiment can be obtained. Here we report on the current status of our data analysis and give an outlook on the achievable accuracy of this test.