The Unique Role of Jason-2 Geodetic Mission for High Resolution Gravity
Field Modelling
Abstract
The Geodetic Mission (GM) of Jason-2 was planned to provide
ground-tracks with a systematic spacing of 4 km after 2 years and 2 km
after 4 years to increase the spatial resolution of global altimetric
gravity fields. Jason-2 ceased operation after 2 years of GM but
provided a fantastic dataset. We highlight and evaluate the improvement
to the gravity field which has been derived from the GM. The ageing
Jason-2 suffered from several safe-holds and instrument outages. Here,
we try to quantify the effect of safe-holds on marine gravity and
discuss suitable approaches advising future GM like Jason-3. We evaluate
the importance of attempting to “rewind” the mission to recover
missing tracks as well as the possibility to continue an existing GM by
using the same orbital plane. The latter idea would allow bisecting the
already 2-years Jason-2 GM creating a 2 km grid after 2 years of Jason-3
GM.