GRACE-FO: The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On Mission

Kornfeld, Richard P.; Arnold, Bradford W.; Groß, Michael; Dahya, Neil; Klipstein, William; Gath, Peter; Bettadpur, Srinivas

doi:10.2514/1.a34326

Cited by 308 publications

(181 citation statements)

References 15 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

147

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…To provide consistent long-term gravity field time series of highest possible quality to the user community the SDS has recently reprocessed its gravity field solutions over the complete GRACE mission duration. This latest reprocessing, referred to as release 06 (RL06) [10][11][12], comprises updated background models and processing standards which are also applied to consistently process the first release of gravity field solutions based on data from the GRACE Follow-on (GRACE-FO) mission [13]. The GRACE-FO satellites were successfully launched in May 2018 and are designed to continue the unique GRACE data record for at least five additional years.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The GFZ GRACE RL06 Monthly Gravity Field Time Series: Processing Details and Quality Assessment

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Time-variable gravity field models derived from observations of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, whose science operations phase ended in June 2017 after more than 15 years, enabled a multitude of studies of Earth’s surface mass transport processes and climate change. The German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), routinely processing such monthly gravity fields as part of the GRACE Science Data System, has reprocessed the complete GRACE mission and released an improved GFZ GRACE RL06 monthly gravity field time series. This study provides an insight into the processing strategy of GFZ RL06 which has been considerably changed with respect to previous GFZ GRACE releases, and modifications relative to the precursor GFZ RL05a are described. The quality of the RL06 gravity field models is analyzed and discussed both in the spectral and spatial domain in comparison to the RL05a time series. All results indicate significant improvements of about 40% in terms of reduced noise. It is also shown that the GFZ RL06 time series is a step forward in terms of consistency, and that errors of the gravity field coefficients are more realistic. These findings are confirmed as well by independent validation of the monthly GRACE models, as done in this work by means of ocean bottom pressure in situ observations and orbit tests with the GOCE satellite. Thus, the GFZ GRACE RL06 time series allows for a better quantification of mass changes in the Earth system.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The GFZ GRACE RL06 Monthly Gravity Field Time Series: Processing Details and Quality Assessment

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The GRACE mission proved the measurement concept of ranging between two low-flying satellites and initiated the time series of monthly snapshots of the timevariable gravity field (Tapley et al 2004). The GRACE-FO mission not only extends this time series, but also demonstrated laser ranging between two low-flying satellites (Abich et al 2019;Kornfeld et al 2019). To prepare the technology required for the NGGM concept, several complementary and basic Technology Research Programme (TRP) studies were initiated and are currently running, notably:…”

Section: Technology Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is possible to implement both schemes such that the laser beam is either on the line connecting the centers of mass of the two satellites ("on-axis configuration") or parallel to that line ("racetrack configuration"). In the latter, the laser beams are reflected by a triple mirror assembly, which offers the advantage that the center of mass is not occupied by the ranging system, while the measured range refers directly to the distance between the centers of mass of the satellites (Kornfeld et al 2019). Moreover, the racetrack configuration offers advantages in view of polarization, stray light, complexity of operation and verification during instrument development and is, therefore, the preferred configuration for NGGM.…”

Section: Satellite System Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

ESA’s next-generation gravity mission concepts

Haagmans

Siemes

Massotti

et al. 2020

Rend. Fis. Acc. Lincei

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The paper addresses the preparatory studies of future ESA mission concepts devoted to improve our understanding of the Earth's mass change phenomena causing temporal variations in the gravity field, at different temporal and spatial scales, due to ice mass changes of ice sheets and glaciers, continental water cycles, ocean masses dynamics and solid Earth deformations. The ESA initiatives started in 2003 with a study on observation techniques for solid Earth missions and continued through several studies focusing on the satellite system, technology development for propulsion and distance metrology, preferred mission concepts, the attitude and orbit control system, as well as the optimization of the satellite constellation. These activities received precious inputs from the GOCE, GRACE and GRACE-FO missions. More recently, several studies related to new sensor concepts based on cold atom interferometry (CAI) were conducted, mainly focusing on technology development for different instrument configurations (GOCE-like and GRACE-like) and including validation activities, e.g. a first successful airborne survey with a CAI gravimeter. The latest results concerning the preferred satellite architectures and constellations, payload design and estimated science performance will be presented as well as remaining open issues for future concepts.

show abstract

“…Therefore, we limit the evaluations in this paper to the quality assessment of GRACE-A, seen as representative for both flight models. After decommissioning and atmospheric reentry of GRACE on 24 December, 2017 (GRACE-B) and 10 March, 2018 (GRACE-A) the success of the mission was continued with the launch of GRACE follow-on in May 2018 [50,51]. However, as of early 2020, RO data from this follow-on mission are not yet available to the community.…”

Section: Missions and Spacecraft Payloadmentioning

confidence: 99%

Precise Orbit Determination for Climate Applications of GNSS Radio Occultation including Uncertainty Estimation

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Radio Occultation (RO) is a highly valuable remote sensing technique for probing the Earth's atmosphere, due to its global coverage, high accuracy, long-term stability, and essentially all-weather capability. In order to ensure the highest quality of essential climate variables (ECVs), derived from GNSS signal tracking by RO satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), the orbit positions and velocities of the GNSS transmitter and LEO receiver satellites need to be determined with high and proven accuracy and reliability. Wegener Center's new Reference Occultation Processing System (rOPS) hence aims to integrate uncertainty estimation at all stages of the processing. Here we present a novel setup for precise orbit determination (POD) within the rOPS, which routinely and in parallel performs the LEO POD with the two independent software packages Bernese GNSS software (v5.2) and NAPEOS (v3.3.1), employing two different GNSS orbit data products. This POD setup enables mutual consistency checks of the calculated orbit solutions and is used for position and velocity uncertainty estimation, including estimated systematic and random uncertainties. For LEOs enabling laser tracking we involve position uncertainty estimates from satellite laser ranging. Furthermore, we intercompare the LEO orbit solutions with solutions from other leading orbit processing centers for cross-validation. We carefully analyze multi-month, multi-satellite POD result statistics and find a strong overall consistency of estimates within LEO orbit uncertainty target specifications of 5 cm in position and 0.05 mm/s in velocity for the CHAMP, GRACE-A, and Metop-A/B missions. In 92% of the days investigated over two representative 3-month periods (July to September in 2008 and 2013) these POD uncertainty targets, which enable highly accurate climate-quality RO processing, are satisfied. The moderately higher uncertainty estimates found for the remaining 8% of days (∼5-15 cm) result in increased uncertainties of RO-retrieved ECVs. This allows identification of RO profiles of somewhat reduced quality, a potential benefit for adequate further use in climate monitoring and research.

show abstract

GRACE-FO: The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On Mission

Cited by 308 publications

References 15 publications

The GFZ GRACE RL06 Monthly Gravity Field Time Series: Processing Details and Quality Assessment

The GFZ GRACE RL06 Monthly Gravity Field Time Series: Processing Details and Quality Assessment

ESA’s next-generation gravity mission concepts

Precise Orbit Determination for Climate Applications of GNSS Radio Occultation including Uncertainty Estimation

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About