Joint analysis of two-way laser range and one-way frequency measurements for the gravitational redshift experiment with the RadioAstron spacecraft

Abstract

We consider the problem of joint analysis of two-way laser range and one-way frequency measurements in high-precision tests of general relativity with spacecrafts. Of main interest to such tests is the accuracy of the computed values of the one-way frequency observables. We identify the principal sources of error in these observables to be the errors in the modeled corrections due to various `small' effects, such as that of the troposphere, the error in the reflection time of the laser pulse from the spacecraft, and the error of fitting the spacecraft trajectory to the laser data. We suggest ways to evaluating these errors.