Abstract
Satellite missions providing data for a continuous monitoring of the Earth gravity field and its changes are fundamental to study climate changes, hydrology, sea level changes, and solid Earth phenomena. GRACE-FO (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On) mission was launched in 2018 and NGGM (Next Generation Gravity Mission) studies are ongoing for the long-term monitoring of the time-variable gravity field. In recent years, an innovative mission concept for gravity measurements has also emerged, exploiting a spaceborne gravity gradio-meter based on cold atom interferometers. In particular, a team of researchers from Italian universities and research institutions has proposed a mission concept called MOCASS (Mass Observation with Cold Atom Sensors in Space) and conducted the study to investigate the performance of a cold atom gradiometer on board a low Earth orbiter and its impact on the modeling of different geophysical phenomena. This paper presents the analysis of the gravity gradient data attainable by such a mission. Firstly, the mathematical model for the MOCASS data processing will be described. Then numerical simulations will be presented, considering different satellite orbital altitudes, pointing modes and instrument configurations (single-arm and double-arm); overall, data were simulated for twenty different observation scenarios. Finally, the simulation results will be illustrated, showing the applicability of the proposed concept and the improvement in modeling the static gravity field with respect to GOCE (Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer).
Highlights
Successful satellite gravity missions such as GRACE (Tapley et al, 2004) and GOCE (ESA, 1999) have provided plenty of data for monitoring the Earth gravity field and its changes
Just to mention an example, GOCE significantly contributed to the knowledge of the mean dynamic topography at global scale (Knudsen et al, 2019) thanks to a geoid estimation with an accuracy of 1–2 cm up to a maximum spherical harmonic degree 200–220 (ESA, 1999); space and time resolutions are still insufficient for small and closed or semi-closed basins, like the Mediterranean Sea, and an improved gravity mission could fill this gap
The purpose of this study was to investigate the possible implementation of a future generation of gravity missions using gradiometers based on the cold atom interferometry
Summary
Successful satellite gravity missions such as GRACE (Tapley et al, 2004) and GOCE (ESA, 1999) have provided plenty of data for monitoring the Earth gravity field and its changes. The GRACE-FO twin spacecrafts (Kornfeld et al, 2019) Ongoing studies such as NGGM are being carried out for the long-term monitoring of the timevariable gravity field with high temporal and spatial resolution (Haagmans et al, 2020). Ice masses carry a significant gravity signal: time-variable gravity solutions allow to quantify the ice-sheet mass variations and their impact on climate. All these improvements can give great benefits to
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