In this note we comment on a recent paper by I.Ciufolini about the possibility of placing the proposed terrestrial satellite LARES in a low-altitude , nearly polar orbit in order to measure the general relativistic Lense-Thirring effect with its node .
Ciufolini claims that , for a departure of 4 deg in the satellite ’ s inclination i from the ideal polar configuration ( i = 90 deg ) , the impact of the errors in the even zonal harmonics of the geopotential , modelled with EIGEN-GRACE02S , would be nearly zero allowing for a few-percent measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect .
Instead , we find that , with the same Earth gravity model and for the same values of the inclination , the upper bound of the systematic error due to the mismodelling in the even zonals amounts to 64 \% of the relativistic effect investigated .