Gaia and the asteroids: Local test of GR

Abstract We present in the following some capabilities of the Gaia mission for performing local test of General Relativity (GR) based on the astrometry of asteroids. This ESA cornerstone mission, to be launched in Spring 2012, will observe—in addition to the stars and QSOs—a large number of small solar system bodies with unprecedented photometric and, mostly, astrometric precisions. Indeed, it is expected that about 250,000 asteroids will be observed with a nominal precision ranging from a few milli-arcsecond (mas), to sub-mas precision, depending on the target's brightness. While the majority of this sample is constituted of known main-belt asteroids orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, a substantial fraction will be made of near-Earth objects, and possibly some newly discovered inner-Earth or co-orbital objects. Here we show the results obtained from a simulation of Gaia observations for local tests of GR in the gravitational field of the Sun. The simulation takes into account the time sequences and geometry of the observations that are particular to Gaia observations of solar system objects, as well as the instrument sensitivity and photon noise. We show the results from a variance analysis for the nominal precision of the joint determination of the solar quadrupole J2 and the PPN parameter β. Additionally we include the link of the dynamical reference frame to the conventional kinematically non-rotating reference frame (as obtained in the visible wavelength by Gaia observations of QSOs). The study is completed by the determination of a possible variation of the gravitational constant /G, and deviation from Newtonian 1/r2 gravitational law. Comparisons to the results obtained from other techniques are also given.