Roger Haagmans

GOCE: ESA’s First Earth Explorer Core Mission

This paper introduces the first ESA Core Earth Explorer mission, GOCE. in the context of ESA’s Living Planet programme. GOCE will measure highly accurate, high spatial resolution differential accelerations in three dimensions along a well characterised orbit: the mission is planned for launch in early 2006. The mission objectives are to obtain gravity gradient data such that new global and regional models of the static Earth’s gravity field and of the geoid can be deduced at length scales down to 100 km. These products will have broad application in the fields of geodesy, oceanography, solid-earth physics and glaciology.

The Swarm End-to-End mission simulator study: A demonstration of separating the various contributions to Earth’s magnetic field using synthetic data

Swarm, a satellite constellation to measure Earth’s magnetic field with unpreceded accuracy, has been selected by ESA for launch in 2009. The mission will provide the best ever survey of the geomagnetic field and its temporal evolution, in order to gain new insights into the Earth system by improving our understanding of the Earth’s interior and climate. An End-to-End mission performance simulation was carried out during Phase A of the mission, with the aim of analyzing the key system requirements, particularly with respect to the number of Swarm satellites and their orbits related to the science objectives of Swarm. In order to be able to use realistic parameters of the Earth’s environment, the mission simulation starts at January 1, 1997 and lasts until re-entry of the lower satellites five years later. Synthetic magnetic field values were generated for all relevant contributions to Earth’s magnetic field: core and lithospheric fields, fields due to currents in the ionosphere and magnetosphere, due to their secondary, induced, currents in the oceans, lithosphere and mantle, and fields due to currents coupling the ionosphere and magnetosphere. Several independent methods were applied to the synthetic data to analyze various aspects of field recovery in relation to different number of satellites, different constellations and realistic noise sources. This paper gives an overview of the study activities, describes the generation of the synthetic data, and assesses the obtained results.

VII: CLOSING SESSION: GOCE: ESA's First Earth Explorer Core Mission

This paper introduces the first ESA Core Earth Explorer mission, GOCE, in the context of ESAs Living Planet programme. GOCE will measure highly accurate, high spatial resolution differential accelerations in three dimensions along a well characterised orbit: the mission is planned for launch in early 2006. The mission objectives are to obtain gravity gradient data such that new global and regional models of the static Earths gravity field and of the geoid can be deduced at length scales down to 100 km. These products will have broad application in the fields of geodesy, oceanography, solid-earth physics and glaciology.

The Swarm Initial Field Model for the 2014 geomagnetic field

Data from the first year of ESAs Swarm constellation mission are used to derive the Swarm Initial Field Model (SIFM), a new model of the Earths magnetic field and its time variation. In addition to the conventional magnetic field observations provided by each of the three Swarm satellites, explicit advantage is taken of the constellation aspect by including east-west magnetic intensity gradient information from the lower satellite pair. Along-track differences in magnetic intensity provide further information concerning the north-south gradient. The SIFM static field shows excellent agreement (up to at least degree 60) with recent field models derived from CHAMP data, providing an initial validation of the quality of the Swarm magnetic measurements. Use of gradient data improves the determination of both the static field and its secular variation, with the mean misfit for east-west intensity differences between the lower satellite pair being only 0.12 nT.

A Spaceborne Gravity Gradiometer Concept Based on Cold Atom Interferometers for Measuring Earth’s Gravity Field

We propose a concept for future space gravity missions using cold atom interferometers for measuring the diagonal elements of the gravity gradient tensor and the spacecraft angular velocity. The aim is to achieve better performance than previous space gravity missions due to a very low white noise spectral behavior and a very high common mode rejection, with the ultimate goals of determining the fine structures of the gravity field with higher accuracy than GOCE and detecting time-variable signals in the gravity field better than GRACE.

Intercontinental height datum connection with GOCE and GPS-levelling data

Abstract In this study an attempt is made to establish height system datum connections based upon a gravity field and steady-state ocean circulation explorer (GOCE) gravity field model and a set of global positioning system (GPS) and levelling data. The procedure applied in principle is straightforward. First local geoid heights are obtained point wise from GPS and levelling data. Then the mean of these geoid heights is computed for regions nominally referring to the same height datum. Subsequently, these local mean geoid heights are compared with a mean global geoid from GOCE for the same region. This way one can identify an offset of the local to the global geoid per region. This procedure is applied to a number of regions distributed worldwide. Results show that the vertical datum offset estimates strongly depend on the nature of the omission error, i.e. the signal not represented in the GOCE model. For a smooth gravity field the commission error of GOCE, the quality of the GPS and levelling data and the averaging control the accuracy of the vertical datum offset estimates. In case the omission error does not cancel out in the mean value computation, because of a sub-optimal point distribution or a characteristic behaviour of the omitted part of the geoid signal, one needs to estimate a correction for the omission error from other sources. For areas with dense and high quality ground observations the EGM2008 global model is a good choice to estimate the omission error correction in theses cases. Relative intercontinental height datum offsets are estimated by applying this procedure between the United State of America (USA), Australia and Germany. These are compared to historical values provided in the literature and computed with the same procedure. The results obtained in this study agree on a level of 10 cm to the historical results. The changes mainly can be attributed to the new global geoid information from GOCE, rather than to the ellipsoidal heights or the levelled heights. These historical levelling data are still in use in many countries. This conclusion is supported by other results on the validation of the GOCE models.

Magnetospheric ULF wave studies in the frame of Swarm mission: a time-frequency analysis tool for automated detection of pulsations in magnetic and electric field observations

We combine the advantages of multi-spacecraft and ground-based monitoring of the geospace environment in order to analyze and study magnetospheric ultra low frequency (ULF) waves. In line with this aim, we also develop and deliver relevant analysis tools based on wavelet transforms and tailored to the Swarm mission. In the preparation phase as well as the lifetime of the Swarm mission, the analysis of isolated ULF wave events— especially those detected in the Pc3 frequency range (20–100 mHz) that a topside ionosphere mission efficiently resolves—can help to elucidate the processes that play a crucial role in the generation of waves and their most defining propagation characteristics. Additionally, we offer a useful platform to monitor the wave evolution from the outer boundaries of Earth’s magnetosphere through the topside ionosphere down to the surface. Data from a single Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite (CHAMP), a multi-satellite LEO mission (ST5) and the ongoing multi-satellite magnetospheric mission (Cluster) along with a ground-based magnetic network (CARISMA) are used to demonstrate the potential of our analysis technique in studying wave evolution in detail. A better understanding of the generation and propagation of waves will also allow to geophysically validate some of Swarm’s data products, especially those related to the magnetic and electric fields in geospace. With a carefully selected case study focusing on the recovery phase of a moderate magnetic storm (9 April 2006 with a minimum Dst value of −82 nT) as a starting point, we clearly demonstrate the capabilities offered by our wavelet analysis tools and highlight the options opened to treat various categories of multipoint multi-instrument measurements (both spaceborne and ground-based) for signatures of ULF wave signals as well as the effects of various other sources.

Geomagnetic Research From Space

The Decade of Geopotential Field Research, inaugurated in 1999 with the launch of the Danish satellite Orsted on 23 February, was designed as an international effort to promote and coordinate continuous monitoring of geopotential field variability in the near-Earth environment. Since 1999, the Challenging Minisatellite Payload (CHAMP), the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), the Satelite de Aplicaciones Cientificas-C (SAC-C), and most recently, the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellites have combined with Orsted to generate an unprecedented wealth of data on Earths magnetic and gravity fields.

Simultaneous field‐aligned currents at Swarm and Cluster satellites

We show for the first time, with direct, multispacecraft calculations of electric current density, and other methods, matched signatures of field-aligned currents (FACs) sampled simultaneously near the ionosphere at low (similar to 500km altitude) orbit and in the magnetosphere at medium (similar to 2.5 R-E altitude) orbits using a particular Swarm and Cluster conjunction. The Cluster signatures are interpreted and ordered through joint mapping of the ground/magnetospheric footprints and estimation of the auroral zone boundaries (taken as indication of the boundaries of Region 1 and Region 2 currents). We find clear evidence of both small-scale and large-scale FACs and clear matching of the behavior and structure of the large-scale currents at both Cluster and Swarm. The methodology is made possible through the joint operations of Cluster and Swarm, which contain, in the first several months of Swarm operations, a number of close three-spacecraft configurations.

Determination of Non-Conservative Accelerations from Orbit Analysis

It is shown by means of an extensive simulation study as well as an experiment using real CHAMP data that it is feasible to accurately estimate non-conservative accelerations from precise GPS-based orbit perturbations. Assuming the availability of high-precision gravity field models, such as anticipated for GRACE and GOCE, an accuracy of better than 50 nm/s2 seems possible for 30-seconds averaged accelerations. The remaining dominant error sources seem to be GPS receiver carrier-phase noise and GPS ephemeris errors.