Abstract
We present a proof-of-concept of gravity field recovery from satellite-to-satellite tracking (sst) in formation flight (ff). Three orbit types will be investigated: grace-type sst, co-orbital ff on a 2:1 relative ellipse, and out-of-plane ff on a circular relative orbit. All formations have comparable orbit characteristics: near polar, near eccentric, and short baselines of typically 10 km length.
First, we demonstrate that these orbits are sufficiently stable at low altitudes in a realistic gravity field. Next, we perform a closed-loop simulation, in which an input gravity field is used for orbit integration and generation of observations in the forward mode. Subsequently, in the inverse mode, the gravity field is recovered.
Comparison between input and output fields demonstrate that gravity recovery based on sst observables from formations containing radial and/or out-of-plane information outperform grace-type along-track sst. The gravity fields recovered from the former formation types possess a lower error spectrum and an isotropic error structure.
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© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Sneeuw, N., Sharifi, M., Keller, W. (2008). Gravity Recovery from Formation Flight Missions. In: Xu, P., Liu, J., Dermanis, A. (eds) VI Hotine-Marussi Symposium on Theoretical and Computational Geodesy. International Association of Geodesy Symposia, vol 132. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74584-6_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74584-6_5
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