LARES 2 is a new scientific mission for General Relativity and space geodesy funded by the Italian space agency (ASI). This new space mission is the evolution of the LAGEOS 3 proposal and will also take advantage of the experience gained during the ASI mission LARES, started in 2012 with the launch of the satellite. Differently from LARES, the LARES 2 orbit is much higher (about 6000km instead of 1450km) while the satellite has approximately the same mass (slightly less) as that of LARES. The more powerful launcher VEGA C is therefore required to put the satellite in orbit. This new launcher of ESA is under development by ELV (ASI-AVIO) and should be ready in 2019. The main goal of the LARES 2 mission is to improve the measurement of the General Relativity effect, known as frame-dragging. Frame dragging is the dragging of space-time due to mass-energy currents (specifically the Earth rotation). LAGEOS and LARES 2, also with data from the LARES, LAGEOS 2 and GRACE satellites, will allow the measurement of this effect around the Earth at the level of few parts in a thousand. This very high accuracy is achievable thanks to the very accurate orbital determination and analysis and to the availability of very accurate models of the Earth gravitational field.The satellite will be put in a supplementary orbit with respect to LAGEOS, launched by NASA in 1976. In this paper we show how LARES 2 will be able to achieve such a demanding goal and how it will also contribute to other fields such as geodesy and navigation.
