Global gravity field recovery from the ARISTOTELES satellite mission

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Abstract
One of the primary objectives of the future ARISTOTELES satellite mission is to map Earth's gravity field with high resolution and accuracy. In order to achieve this objective, the ARISTOTELES satellite will be equipped with a gravity gradiometer and a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver. Global gravity field error analyses have been performed for several combinations of gradiometer and GPS observations. These analyses indicated that the bandwidth limitation of the gradiometer prevents a stable high‐accuracy, high‐resolution gravity solution if no additional information is available. However, with the addition of high‐accuracy GPS observations, a stable gravity field solution can be obtained. A combination of the measurements acquired by the high‐quality GPS receiver and the bandwidth‐limited gradiometer on board ARISTOTELES will yield a global gravity field model with a resolution of less than 100 km and with an accuracy of better than 5 mGal for gravity anomalies and 10 cm for geoid undulations.