A contrastive study on the influences of radial and three-dimensional satellite gravity gradiometry on the accuracy of the Earth's gravitational field recovery

The accuracy of the Earth’s gravitational field measured from the gravity field and steady-state ocean circulation explorer(GOCE),up to 250 degrees,influenced by the radial gravity gradient V zz and three-dimensional gravity gradient V ij from the satellite gravity gradiometry(SGG) are contrastively demonstrated based on the analytical error model and numerical simulation,respectively.Firstly,the new analytical error model of the cumulative geoid height,influenced by the radial gravity gradient V zz and three-dimensional gravity gradient V ij are established,respectively.In 250 degrees,the GOCE cumulative geoid height error measured by the radial gravity gradient V zz is about 2 1/2 times higher than that measured by the three-dimensional gravity gradient V ij.Secondly,the Earth’s gravitational field from GOCE completely up to 250 degrees is recovered using the radial gravity gradient V zz and three-dimensional gravity gradient V ij by numerical simulation,respectively.The study results show that when the measurement error of the gravity gradient is 3×10 12 /s 2,the cumulative geoid height errors using the radial gravity gradient V zz and three-dimensional gravity gradient V ij are 12.319 cm and 9.295 cm at 250 degrees,respectively.The accuracy of the cumulative geoid height using the three-dimensional gravity gradient V ij is improved by 30%-40% on average compared with that using the radial gravity gradient V zz in 250 degrees.Finally,by mutual verification of the analytical error model and numerical simulation,the orders of magnitude from the accuracies of the Earth’s gravitational field recovery make no substantial differences based on the radial and three-dimensional gravity gradients,respectively.Therefore,it is feasible to develop in advance a radial cold-atom interferometric gradiometer with a measurement accuracy of 10 13 /s 2-10 15 /s 2 for precisely producing the next-generation GOCE Follow-On Earth gravity field model with a high spatial resolution.     

Accurate and rapid error estimation on global gravitational field from current GRACE and future GRACE Follow-On missions

Firstly, the new combined error model of cumulative geoid height influenced by four error sources, including the inter-satellite range-rate of an interferometric laser (K-band) ranging system, the orbital position and velocity of a global positioning system (GPS) receiver and non-conservative force of an accelerometer, is established from the perspectives of the power spectrum principle in physics using the semi-analytical approach. Secondly, the accuracy of the global gravitational field is accurately and rapidly estimated based on the combined error model; the cumulative geoid height error is 1.985× 10^-1~m at degree 120 based on GRACE Level 1B measured observation errors of the year 2007 published by the US Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the cumulative geoid height error is 5.825× 10^ - 2~m at degree 360 using GRACE Follow-On orbital altitude 250~km and inter-satellite range 50 km. The matching relationship of accuracy indexes from GRACE Follow-On key payloads is brought forward, and the dependability of the combined error model is validated. Finally, the feasibility of high-accuracy and high-resolution global gravitational field estimation from GRACE Follow-On is demonstrated based on different satellite orbital altitudes.