IAG-IASPEI 2017

Presentation information

Oral

IAG Symposia » G02. Static gravity field

[G02-2] Gravimetry

Mon. Jul 31, 2017 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM Room 502 (Kobe International Conference Center 5F, Room 502)

Chairs: Yoichi Fukuda (Kyoto University) , Leonid Vitushkin (D.I. Mendeleyev Institute for Metrology)

11:15 AM - 11:30 AM

[G02-2-04] Cold Atom Interferometers Used In Space (CAIUS) for measuring the Earth's gravity field

Olivier Carraz, Luca Massotti, Christian Siemes, Roger Haagmans, Linda Mondin, Pierluigi Silvestrin, Michael Kern (European Space Agency)

In the past decades, it has been shown that atomic quantum sensors are a newly emerging technology that can be used for measuring the Earth's gravity field. Whereas classical accelerometers typically suffer from high noise at low frequencies, Cold Atom Interferometers are highly accurate over the entire frequency range.
There are two ways of making use of that technology: one is a gravity gradiometer concept, which relies on a high common mode rejection that relaxes the drag free control compare to GOCE mission; and the other one is in a low-low satellite-to-satellite ranging concept to correct the spectrally colored noise of the electrostatic accelerometers in the lower frequencies. We will present for both concepts the expected improvement in measurement accuracy and for the gravity gradiometer concept the expected improvement of Earth gravity field models, taking into account the different type of measurements (e.g. single vs. 3 axis, integration time, etc.) and different mission parameters such as attitude control, altitude of the satellite, time duration of the mission, etc.