Measures in Fundamental Physics within the Galileo for Science (G4S_2.0) project using the data of the Galileo Satellite Constellation

Within the G4S_2.0 (Galileo for Science) project, funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), two activities in the field of Fundamental Physics are under investigation and development: a new measure of the Gravitational Red Shift (GRS) and a search for possible Dark Matter (DM) candidates in the form of domain walls. Both researches are based on data from high-accuracy clocks aboard the satellites.

The GRS measurement exploits the two Galileo satellites DORESA and MILENA injected in 2014 into a wrong orbit characterized by a too high eccentricity. The corrected orbit, still has a relatively high eccentricity (about 0.16) suitable for gravitational measurements. Consequently, the clocks frequency of these two satellites is modulated with the changes of the Earth’s gravitational potential at the height of the satellite.

The search for DM matter is done by looking for the expected rapid perturbations in on-board clocks when a structure like a domain wall crosses Earth’s orbit and the Galileo constellation.  If this occurs, on-board clocks would have to change their frequency relative to a reference clock on Earth.

For both targets, a careful knowledge of the satellite’s position is required, to be obtained with a Precise Orbit Determination (POD) in which the main non gravitational perturbations, such as direct solar radiation pressure, are adequately modeled and accounted for. Furthermore, the clock data needs to be cleaned up by removing long-term drift and fast time jumps unrelated to the effects we want to measure.

We will present the preliminary results obtained within these activities.