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Can the Gravitational Affects Due to Dark Matter be Felt By a Spacecraft at the Langrange Points?

-- | May 12, 2017

Question: Would it be possible to detect dark matter near the earth by sending out a space craft to one of earth’s theoretical Lagrange points (L1 or L2), and then see where the craft actually becomes stable in space?

Answer: Probably not. The mass contribution due to dark matter which would modify that felt by a satellite at L1 or L2 would be more than ten thousand times smaller than the mass of the Earth or Sun. Too small to cause a significant deflection of the position of a satellite.

Jeff Mangum

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