The gravity field of the Earth

Abstract

In recent years the Earth’s gravitational field has been determined with continually improving accuracy, by using hundreds of thousands of observations of Earth satellites, chiefly optical, laser and Doppler, together with surface gravimetry and, most recently, altimeter measurements from the Geos 3 satellite. The geopotential is usually expressed as a double series of tesseral harmonics, and several hundred of the harmonic coefficients are evaluated. Progress in this work during the 1970s is briefly outlined, and some attempt is made to assess the accuracy of current geoid maps and sets of harmonic coefficients, as exemplified in the latest models derived at the Goddard Space Flight Center. The harmonic coefficients of order 14, 15 and 30 in the Goddard Earth Model 10B are compared with values obtained independently by analysis of resonant orbits: the results suggest that the values in GEM 10B are realistic for these orders, and presumably others. It appears that the accuracy of the geoid maps is now approaching 1 m.