1. Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Innovazione, Università di Lecce and INFN Sezione di Lecce, Via Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy
2. Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET/UMBC), University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, Maryland 21250, USA

Correspondence to: I. Ciufolini¹ Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to I.C. (Email: ignazio.ciufolini@unile.it).

Abstract

An important early prediction of Einstein's general relativity^{1, 2, 3} was the advance of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit, whose measurement provided one of the classical tests of Einstein's theory⁴. The advance of the orbital point-of-closest-approach also applies to a binary pulsar system^{5, 6} and to an Earth-orbiting satellite³. General relativity also predicts that the rotation of a body like Earth will drag the local inertial frames of reference around it^{3, 7}, which will affect the orbit of a satellite⁸. This Lense–Thirring effect has hitherto not been detected with high accuracy⁹, but its detection with an error of about 1 per cent is the main goal of Gravity Probe B—an ongoing space mission using orbiting gyroscopes¹⁰. Here we report a measurement of the Lense–Thirring effect on two Earth satellites: it is 99 5 per cent of the value predicted by general relativity; the uncertainty of this measurement includes all known random and systematic errors, but we allow for a total 10 per cent uncertainty to include underestimated and unknown sources of error.

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