BepiColombo is a joint ESA/JAXA mission to Mercury with challenging objectives regarding geophysics, geodesy, and fundamental physics. The Mercury Orbiter Radioscience Experiment (MORE) is one of the on-board experiments, including three different but linked experiments: gravimetry, rotation, and relativity. The aim of the relativity experiment is the measurement of the post-Newtonian parameters. Thanks to accurate tracking between Earth and spacecraft, the results are expected to be very precise. However, the outcomes of the experiment strictly depend on our “knowledge” about solar system: ephemerides; number of bodies (planets, satellites, and asteroids); and their masses. In this paper we describe a semianalytic model used to perform a covariance analysis to quantify the effects on the relativity experiment, due to the uncertainties of Solar System bodies’ parameters. In particular, our attention is focused on the Nordtvedt parameter $\eta$ used to parametrize the strong equivalence principle violation. After our analysis we estimated $\sigma [\eta ]⪅4.5\times {10}^{-5}$, which is about 1 order of magnitude larger than the “ideal” case where masses of planets and asteroids have no errors. The current value, obtained from ground-based experiments and lunar laser ranging measurements, is $\sigma [\eta ]\approx 4.4\times {10}^{-4}$. Therefore, we conclude that, even in the presence of uncertainties on Solar System parameters, the measurement of $\eta$ by MORE can improve the current precision of about 1 order of magnitude.

• Received 27 May 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.93.123014