GRACE-FO and Swarm accelerometers: An optimal approach for processing
non-gravitational acceleration measurements.
Abstract
GRACE-FO (GFO) and Swarm are two LEO missions that, among others,
provide non-gravitational acceleration measurements required for
geopotential model development and modelling of non-gravitational forces
acting upon them. Unfortunately, the performance of the accelerometers
on board for both missions is not the expected. Measurements from both
missions present dominant bias jumps that occur on all accelerometer
axes and they have been linked to the satellites’ entrance to and exit
from the Earth’s shadow. These jumps are estimated and corrected at
Level 1A of GFO C and at Level 2 of Swarm C in an optimal way using
Least Squares methodology. The corresponding variances of the jumps are
also calculated. Furthermore, the measurements contain spurious signals
and dominant spikes mostly connected with thruster activation, mainly in
the equatorial region or high temperature sensitivity. These
disturbances have a significant impact on the data analysis. We propose
an alternative weighting filter methodology to generate Level 1B data
from Level 1A for GFO C that includes the attenuated spikes and their
corresponding variances and does not involve the removal of the spikes
nor does it include any interpolation to fill data gaps. This
methodology is used for Swarm C accelerometer Level 2 dataset as well.
Using spectral domain methods, we show that the newly generated GFO
Level 1B and Swarm Level 2 data are not contaminated by the presence of
spikes and data jumps. In the polar regions, mostly at the South pole,
spikes in the measurements are connected to magnetic disturbances when
the satellites enter these regions. Our proposed methodology contains an
optimal and unbiased dataset of non-gravitational acceleration
measurements that can be used for the estimation of geopotential models
and also for the investigation of the accelerometer’s response to
electromagnetic disturbances and the modelling of other
non-gravitational accelerations to derive thermospheric neutral
densities.