Abstract
On November 20, 1982, the Mutch Memorial Station (Viking Lander 1) on the surface of Mars interrupted its transmission to Earth due to a loss of the information in its antenna pointing table. It was not heard from again. However, in over six years of operation since its landing in July, 1976, it and Viking Lander 2 have provided a set of ranging data which are sufficiently accurate to enable the Earth-Mars distance to be modeled to ±10m during that period. This unprecedented accuracy in a Solar System data set has been responsible for a major breakthrough in the accuracy of Solar System dynamical tests of relativistic gravity. It is the purpose of this talk to explain the data which are used in the solutions for the relativistic effects (Section 2), to explain the Solar System model which is used to fit the data and the process by which such fits are performed (Section 3), and to discuss the results (Section 4, see also Hellings et al., 1983) of our tests for the effects of the following:
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1.
The Large Numbers Hypothesis and a time-varying gravitational constant,
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2.
PPN parameters β,γ, and α1 along with the value of the solar quadrupole moment J2,
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3.
Moffat’s Nonsymmetric Gravitational Theory (which does not fall into the formalism of the PPN).
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Hellings, R.W. (1984). Testing Relativity with Solar System Dynamics. In: Bertotti, B., de Felice, F., Pascolini, A. (eds) General Relativity and Gravitation. Fundamental Theories of Physics, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6469-3_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6469-3_21
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