GRACE-FO accelerometer data recovery within ITSG-Grace2018 data processing

Activity: Talk or presentationTalk at conference or symposiumScience to science

Description

In GRACE-FO (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-on) mission, similar to its predecessor GRACE, the twin satellites are equipped with three-axis accelerometers, measuring the non-gravitational forces. After one month in orbit, the GRACE-D accelerometer data degraded and its measurements were replaced by synthetic accelerometer data, the so-called transplant data, officially generated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The transplant data was derived from the GRACE-C accelerometer measurements, by applying a time and attitude corrections and adding model-based residual accelerations due to thruster firings on GRACE-D.
For the ITSG-Grace2018 GRACE-FO release, the gravity field recovery is based on the use of in-house Level-1B accelerometer data (ACT1B) using the provided Level-1A data products. In this work, we present a novel approach to recover the ACT1B data by (a) implementing the state-of-the-art non-gravitational force models and (b) applying additional force model corrections.
The preliminary results show the improved ACT1B data not only contributed to a noise reduction but also improved the estimates of the C20 and C30 coefficients. We show that the offset between SLR (Satellite Laser Ranging) and GRACE-FO derived C20 and C30 time series can be reduced remarkably by the use of the new accelerometer product, demonstrating the merit of this new approach.
Period8 May 2020
Event titleEGU General Assembly 2020
Event typeConference
Locationvirtuell, AustriaShow on map