Speaker: Dr. Sasha Buchman

Institution: Stanford University

In 2011, nearly fifty years after its inception, the Gravity Probe B satellite mission delivered the first measurements of how a spinning gyroscope precesses in the gravitational warping of spacetime. Launched 20 April 2004, Gravity Probe B is a space experiment testing two fundamental predictions of Einstein’s theory of general relativity (GR), the geodetic and frame-dragging effects, by means of cryogenic gyroscopes in a 642 km polar Earth orbit.  I will explain the motivation of directly measuring the geodetic and frame dragging effects, detail the experimental challenges involved in designing the experiment, and describe the mission operations and the data analysis.