Gravity field recovery from GOCE orbits using the energy conservation approach

Abstract

The sum of the dissipative energy and energy constant of the GOCE satellite is found by a priori gravity field model at first, and the GOCE dissipative energy is obtained by computing the adjacent epoch difference via the differential method. Then, a gravity field model GOCE-ECP01, which up to the degree and order 80, is recovered by the energy conservation approach from the 103-day precise orbital data of the GOCE satellite collected from November 1, 2009 to January 12, 2010. Finally, the model is compared with existing models EGM96, ITG-CHAMP05S, EIGEN-GRACE2010S, EIGEN-6C and GO_CONS_GCF_2_DIR_R3. The results show that at the same order and degree, the accuracy of model GOCE-EBP01 is higher than those of models EGM96 and ITG-CHAMP05S, but lower than those of models EIGEN-GRACE2010S, EIGEN-6C and GO_CONS_GCF_2_DIR_R3, which is mainly caused by the pole gap.

Keywords

• energy conservation approach
• GOCE satellite
• gravity field model
• dissipative energy
• potential coefficient