Gravitomagnetism and the Earth-Mercury range

We numerically work out the impact of the general relativistic Lense-Thirring effect on the Earth-Mercury range |ρ→| caused by the gravitomagnetic field of the rotating Sun. The peak-to-peak nominal amplitude of the resulting time-varying signal amounts to 1.75 × 101 m over a temporal interval Δt = 2 yr. Future interplanetary laser ranging facilities should reach a cm-level in ranging to Mercury over comparable timescales; for example, the BepiColombo mission, to be launched in 2014, should reach a 4.5-10 cm level over 1 − 8 yr. We looked also at other Newtonian (solar quadrupole mass moment, ring of the minor asteroids, Ceres, Pallas, Vesta, Trans-Neptunian Objects) and post-Newtonian (gravitoelectric Schwarzschild solar field) dynamical effects on the Earth-Mercury range. They act as sources of systematic errors for the Lense-Thirring signal which, in turn, if not properly modeled, may bias the recovery of some key parameters of such other dynamical features of motion. Their nominal peak-to-peak amplitudes are as large as 4 × 105 m (Schwarzschild), 3 × 102 m (Sun's quadrupole), 8 × 101 m (Ceres, Pallas, Vesta), 4 m (ring of minor asteroids), 8 × 10−1 m (Trans-Neptunian Objects). Their temporal patterns are different with respect to that of the gravitomagnetic signal.