Measurement of dragging of inertial frames and gravitomagnetic field using laser-ranged satellites

By analysing the observations of the orbits of the laser-ranged satellites LAGEOS and LAGEOS II, using the program GEODYN, we have obtained the first direct measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect, or dragging of inertial frames, and the first direct experimental evidence for the gravitomagnetic field. The accuracy of our measurement is of about 30%.