G
Geodesy

What would we like to see from future gravity missions? Help us to define the scientific requirements!

What would we like to see from future gravity missions? Help us to define the scientific requirements!

Are you interested in water storage, sea level, ice sheets, crust-mantle dynamics, or any other mass change signals? Please complete the following user requirement survey and help shape future satellite gravity missions

Mass changes on and below the Earth’s surface, such as from water storage variations to groundwater use, glacier melt, sea level change, and earthquakes, among many others, can be observed by satellite gravimetry.

Since 2002, the GRACE and GRACE-FO satellite gravity missions have been observing changes in the Earth’s gravity field that can be converted to mass changes with an accuracy of 2 cm water equivalent at a spatial resolution of about 300 km on monthly data. An enhanced spatial and temporal resolution compared to GRACE/-FO is promised for the new satellite mission called MAGIC, planned by ESA and NASA with an envisaged time frame from 2028 to 2038.

GRACE, GRACE-FO, MAGIC, … and then?

But what happens afterwards? In 15 years, gravity mission constellations will be based on multiple satellite pairs equipped with novel quantum sensor instrumentation providing even larger improvements in spatial and temporal resolution of mass change data, significantly expanding the potential range of applications.

How can you help?

A successful satellite mission requires careful planning over many years and now is the time to specify the goals for a quantum gravity field mission that could be launched in about 15 years. We are therefore interested to know what you as a user have for needs to future satellite missions. Thus, your input to the questions in the survey will help in defining the first scientific requirements matrix for such a mission. The survey is being carried out in the framework of the ESA-funded project QSG4EMT (Quantum Space Gravimetry for monitoring Earth’s Mass Transport Processes) and targets potential future satellite missions that will significantly enhance the retrieval of mass change signals in terms of spatial/temporal resolution and accuracy compared to currently available products.

Where? – https://www.soscisurvey.de/mass_change/

How long will it take? – About 15 minutes

Until when? – June 18

Feel free to share with your colleagues and contact us in case of any questions: qsg4emt@geod.uni-bonn.de 

Thank you very much!

Annette Eicker, Carla Braitenberg, Christina Strohmenger, Jürgen Kusche, Roland Pail


Öykü is a PhD student at Politecnico di Milano (Italy). Her research focus is the static and time-variable gravity field recovery from satellite data and also local gravity field modelling. She is working on mitigation of temporal aliasing for future gravity mission concepts with quantum technologies. Tweets as @callmeboyk, posts as @oykukoc.bsky.social


Rebekka is a researcher at Lantmäteriet (The Swedish Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registration Authority). She is working on glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) modelling with a focus on stress field changes and model development, and is involved in the development of a European velocity model as part of EUREF (Regional Reference Frame IAG Sub-Commission for Europe). Rebekka is also the chair of a IAG (International Association of Geodesy) Joint Study Group on GIA. She received her PhD in 2013 from the University of Calgary.


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