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GRACE Gravity Field Determination Using the Celestial Mechanics Approach – First Results

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Part of the book series: International Association of Geodesy Symposia ((IAG SYMPOSIA,volume 135))

Abstract

We present the first gravity field model AIUB-GRACE01S, which has been generated using the Celestial Mechanics Approach in an extended version. Inter-satellite K-band range-rate observations and GPS-derived kinematic positions are used to solve for the Earth’s gravity field parameters in a generalized orbit determination problem. Apart from the normalized spherical harmonic (SH) coefficients, arc-specific parameters like initial conditions and pseudo-stochastic pulses are set up as common parameters for all measurement types. Our first results based on 1 year of GRACE data demonstrate that the Earth’s static gravity field can be recovered with a good quality, even using EGM96 as a priori model and without accelerometer data and sophisticated background models like short-term mass variations. The use of accelerometer data and sophisticated background models will be a prerequisite for the near future, however, to further improve the inferred gravity field solutions.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous support provided by the Technical University of Munich’s Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in the frame of the project “Satellite Geodesy”.

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Correspondence to A. Jäggi .

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Jäggi, A., Beutler, G., Mervart, L. (2010). GRACE Gravity Field Determination Using the Celestial Mechanics Approach – First Results. In: Mertikas, S. (eds) Gravity, Geoid and Earth Observation. International Association of Geodesy Symposia, vol 135. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10634-7_24

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