A flight test of airborne gravimetry in Antarctic

Abstract

A flight test of airborne gravimetry was conducted in Antarctic based on a strapdown inertial airborne gravimeter called SGA02 during the 36th Chinese National Antarctic Research Expedition. This test was aimed at evaluating accuracy of the system, collecting gravity data, and measuring the system’s practicability. Airborne gravimetry is one of the most significant methods in gathering gravity data with mGal-level precision over several kilometers of spatial resolution, which is a kind of strategic resource in the field of geophysics and many other important areas. A lack of southern hemisphere research and geophysical data exists due to the difficult accessibility of the Antarctic region. Since geophysical data of this region can hardly be acquired, the test performed in Antarctic can, in some degree, make up the gap between the gravity data and other geographic features. SGA02 is independently developed by NUDT (National University of Defense Technology), based on integrated SINS/DGPS system (strapdown inertial navigation system and differential global positioning system). In the flight test of the airborne gravimetry in the Antarctic region, SGA02 performed with 1.5 mGal precision (160s of filtering). The constitution of the whole system is introduced and the theory of the strapdown inertial airborne gravimeter is briefly discussed. The data gained from this test is displayed and analyzed, followed by the discussion and evaluation of the results.