Methodological aspects related to gravity analysis from future missions

Torsten Mayer-Gürr, Annette Eicker, Enrico Kurtenbach, Jürgen Kusche
Institute for Geodesy and Geoinformation, Bonn University

Experience with CHAMP and GRACE has shown that ‘alternative’ methodologies to process orbit and inter-satellite ranging data to gravity field models are competitive to the conventional dynamic method. We expect this will be the case for data analysis from future (i.e. GRACE-FO) missions as well. After a brief review on the ‘Bonn method’ (that essentially solves a series of temporal boundary value problems for an orbit or for inter-satellite observables, instead of initial-value problems), its implementation and current results, we will discuss aspects related to future missions where the data will be of even higher accuracy.