Physical analysis on improving the recovery accuracy of the Earth’s gravity field by a combination of satellite observations in along-track and cross-track directions

doi:10.1088/1674-1056/23/10/109101

Abstract The physical investigations on the accuracy improvement to the measurement of the Earth's gravity field recovery are carried out based on the next-generation Pendulum-A/B out-of-plane twin-satellite formation in this paper. Firstly, the Earth's gravity field complete up to degree and order 100 is, respectively, recovered by the collinear and pendulum satellite formations using the orbital parameters of the satellite and the matching accuracies of key payloads from the twin GRACE satellites. The research results show that the accuracy of the Earth's gravity field model from the Pendulum-A/B satellite formation is about two times higher than from the collinear satellite formation, and the further improvement of the determination accuracy of the Earth's gravity field model is feasible by the next-generation Pendulum-A/B out-of-plane twin-satellite formation. Secondly, the Earth's gravity field from Pendulum-A/B complete up to degree and order 100 is accurately recovered based on the orbital parameters of the satellite (e.g., an orbital altitude of 400 km, an intersatellite range of 100 km, an orbital inclination of 89° and an orbital eccentricity of 0.001), the matching accuracies of space-borne instruments (e.g. 10 ^-6 m in the intersatellite range, 10 ^-3 m in the orbital position, 10 ^-6 m/s in orbital velocity, and 10 ^-11 m/s² in non-conservative force), an observation time of 30 days and a sampling interval of 10 s. The measurement accuracy of the Earth's gravity field from the next-generation Pendulum-A/B out-of-plane twin-satellite formation is full of promise for being improved by about 10 times compared with that from the current GRACE satellite formation. Finally, the physical requirements for the next-generation Pendulum-A/B out-of-plane twin-satellite formation are analyzed, and it is proposed that the satellite orbital altitude be preferably designed to be close to 400± 50 km and the matching precision of key sensors from the Pendulum-A/B mission be about one order of magnitude higher than from the GRACE program.

Keywords: twin pendulum-A/B satellites collinear and pendulum satellite formations along-cross-track observations physical analysis satellite gravity recovery

Received: 24 February 2014
Revised: 08 April 2014
Accepted manuscript online:

PACS:

91.10.-v

(Geodesy and gravity)

Fund: Project supported by the Main Direction Program of Knowledge Innovation of Chinese Academy of Sciences for Distinguished Young Scholars (Grant No. KZCX2-EW-QN114), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41004006, 41202094, 41131067, and 11173049), the Merit-based Scientific Research Foundation of the State Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of China for Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars (Grant No. 2011), the Open Research Fund Program of the Key Laboratory of Geospace Environment and Geodesy, Ministry of Education, China (Grant No. 11-01-02), the Open Research Fund Program of the Key Laboratory of Geo-informatics of National Administration of Surveying, Mapping, and Geoinformation of China (Grant No. 201322), the Open Research Fund Program of the State Key Laboratory of Geo-information Engineering, China (Grant No. SKLGIE2013-M-1-5), the Main Direction Program of Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. Y309451045), and the Research Fund Program of State Key Laboratory of Geodesy and Earth's Dynamics, China (Grant No. Y309491050).

Corresponding Authors: Zheng Wei
E-mail: wzheng@asch.whigg.ac.cn

About author: 91.10.-v

Cite this article:

Zheng Wei (郑伟), Hsu Hou-Tse (许厚泽), Zhong Min (钟敏), Yun Mei-Juan (员美娟) Physical analysis on improving the recovery accuracy of the Earth’s gravity field by a combination of satellite observations in along-track and cross-track directions 2014 Chin. Phys. B 23 109101


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[1]	Efficient and rapid accuracy estimation of the Earth's gravitational field from next-generation GOCE Follow-On by the analytical method Zheng Wei (郑伟), Hsu Hou-Tse (许厚泽), Zhong Min (钟敏), Liu Cheng-Shu (刘成恕), Yun Mei-Juan (员美娟). Chin. Phys. B, 2013, 22(4): 049101.
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Physical analysis on improving the recovery accuracy of the Earth’s gravity field by a combination of satellite observations in along-track and cross-track directions

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