This paper gives the results of a dynamical analysis of the Globesat gravity gradient stabilized satellite in a 500 km circular orbit. The linearized equations of motion are developed and the stability of the satellite is investigated. The satellite is equipped with magnetic torquers for the purpose of providing attitude correction torques. These correction torques can be used to effect large c...

Knowledge about the gravity eld allows an insight into the structure and dynamics of the earth. It provides the geoid as the most important physical reference surface in geodesy and oceanography. Since 2000, the CHAMP (CHallenging Mini-satellite Payload) mission detects the structure of the global gravity eld, followed by the launch of GRACE (Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment) in 2002. In...

Accurate knowledge of Antarctica’s topography, bedrock, and ice sheet thickness is pivotal for climate change and geoscience research. Building on recent significant progress made in satellite gravity mapping with European Space Agency’s Gravity field and Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) mission, we here reverse the widely used approach of validating satellite gravity with topography and inste...

The so-called Colombo-Nyquist (Colombo, The global mapping of gravity with two satellites, 1984) rule in satellite geodesy has been revisited. This rule predicts that for a gravimetric satellite flying in a (near-)polar circular repeat orbit, the maximum resolvable geopotential spherical harmonic degree (lmax) is equal to half the number of orbital revolutions (nr) the satellite completes in on...

A satellite, in its orbit, is affected by perturbing forces, such as atmospheric drag, solar radiation pressure, Earth oblateness, and gravity of the celestial masses (other than the Earth). In this paper, the effects of these forces on the trajectories of different types of LEO satellites and a sample satellite (Z-SAT) are discussed. A few analyses are done on these orbits and the relevant res...

The orbit and instrumental measurement of the Gravity Field and Steady State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite mission offer the highest ever resolution capabilities for mapping Earth’s gravity field from space. However, past analysis predicted that GOCE would not detect changes in ice sheet mass. Here we demonstrate that GOCE gravity gradiometry observations can be combined with Grav...

[1] Satellite gravity measurements from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) provide new quantitative measures of the 2005 extreme drought event in the Amazon river basin, regarded as the worst in over a century. GRACE measures a significant decrease in terrestrial water storage (TWS) in the central Amazon basin in the summer of 2005, relative to the average of the 5 other summer...

As an integral response to its mass distribution, the structure of the Earth’s gravitational field represents an important source of information about our planet. Its knowledge is therefore important for the Earth as a system and for geodesy, solid Earth physics, and oceanography in particular. For the first time in space geodesy, dedicated gravity field missions are being realized during this ...