Integrated sensor analysis for GRACE – development and validation

摘要

The focus of this article is on the accelerometeron board the two GRACE (Gravity Recovery and ClimateExperiment) satellites. In a first analysis the accelerometersystem is studied. The behavior of the test mass and its capacitivefeedback system is simulated in the time and thefrequency domain for one degree of freedom. Only linearaccelerations are considered so far. The second part of theanalysis is about the practical implementation of the simulationmodel: Non-gravitational forces were derived from theGFZ (GeoForschungsZentrum) EPOS (Earth Parameter andOrbit System) software. In a closed loop the accelerometermeasurements derived from these data in connection withsimulated tracking data have been used for orbit recovery includingthe estimation of biases and scale factors for the accelerometerdata. Details and results of this procedure arepresented.Key words. GRACE – sensor analysis – accelerometer