The BMBF Geotechnologien project “Future Gravity Field Satellite Mission” was a joint project between GFZ, German universities and partners from industry and was funded between 2009 till 2012. The overall target was the development of innovative concepts for future satellite-based gravity missions to improve the current GRACE spatial and temporal resolution of the time variable components of the Earth’s gravity field. This can only be achieved by a strong cross-link between geodesy, measurement technology and system design. Therefore, the increased scientific requirements have to be conciliated with improvements in the observation techniques and satellite bus design. Consequently, some key questions of this project were

• Which gain do we get from different satellite constellations with equal instruments?
• Do we need a Laser instead a MW SST link?
• Do we have to realize the optical link by satellite or instrument (mirrors) pointing?
• Do we need a drag-free design or improved accelerometers?
• How can we adopt experiences e.g. from LISA Pathfinder project to a gravity mission?

Section 1.2 was one of the scientific partners and supported the project with experience derived from previous GFZ R&D studies and was responsible for the WP120 “Comprehensive numerical simulation of mission concepts”.

The results have been presented in:

Flechtner, F., Sneeuw, N., Schuh, W.-D. (Eds.)(2014):  Observation of the System Earth from Space – CHAMP, GRACE, GOCE and future missions, (GEOTECHNOLOGIEN Science Report ; 20) (Advanced Technologies in Earth Sciences), Berlin [u.a.] : Springer, XV, 230 p., doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32135-1

Project Partners:

• Geodetic Institute of the University Stuttgart (coordinator)
• Institute of Flight Mechanics and Control of the University Stuttgart
• Institute for Physical Geodesy of the Leibniz University Hannover
• Section 1.2 of Department 1 Geodesy and Remote Sensing, Helmholtz Center Potsdam, German Research Center for Geosciences
• Institute for Geodesy and Geoinformation of the University Bonn
• Institute for Astronomical and Physical Geodesy of the Technical University of Munich
• SpaceTech GmbH Immenstaad
• Kayser-Threde GmbH, Munich
• Menlo Systems GmbH, Martinsried
• Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) of the Leibniz University Hannover

Project Duration:

• 06/2009-05/2012

Funding:

• BMBF