Gravity field recovery and validation by analysis of short arcs of a satellite-to-satellite tracking experiment as CHAMP and GRACE

A procedure for gravity field determination is presented based on the analysis of short arcs of low flying satellites as CHAMP and GRACE. The analysis technique can be applied to high-low as well as to low-low satellite-to-satellite tracking in a consistent way. The method allows to recover the global gravity field of the Earth, combined with a regional gravity field refinement in regions with rough gravity field features. To detect regional residual signals in the observations a preprocessing step is being applied based on the energy balances along the short arcs. This procedure will be applied as well as the validation of the regional gravity field refinement in a post-processing step. First results are presented by using Post-processed Science Orbits (PSO) of CHAMP for a region with rough gravity field features. To demonstrate the applicability to a tailored low-low satellite-to-satellite tracking experiment the procedure is applied to a GRACE simulation scenario.