Quality assessment of LARES satellite ranging data: LARES contribution for improving the terrestrial reference frame

LARES is an Italian Space Agency mission designed to test General Relativity in the weak field of Earth. In particular, the satellite will be able to measure frame-dragging with an accuracy of about 1%. The difficulty of the measurement is mainly due to the perturbations acting on the satellite and the relatively tiny size of the effect, amounting to about 118 milliarcseconds/year. LARES will also provide data to geodesists and it will contribute to GNSS by improving the origin definition of the International Terrestrial Reference Frame. The mission was designed and the satellite subsystems built and tested in less than four years. The short time to launch and the very limited budget of the LARES mission, raised doubts whether LARES could be, as expected by design, one of the best satellite laser ranging targets. The best way to confirm the success of the mission is to look at the range residuals from the primary stations of the International Laser Ranging Service (ILRS). In the paper it will be shown that from the majority of these stations LARES behaves as the best target.