Search results for "Earth gravity mission"

Drift of the Earth’s Principal Axes of Inertia from GRACE and Satellite Laser Ranging Data

2020

The location of the Earth’s principal axes of inertia is a foundation for all the theories and solutions of its rotation, and thus has a broad effect on many fields, including astronomy, geodesy, and satellite-based positioning and navigation systems. That location is determined by the second-degree Stokes coefficients of the geopotential. Accurate solutions for those coefficients were limited to the stationary case for many years, but the situation improved with the accomplishment of Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), and nowadays several solutions for the time-varying geopotential have been derived based on gravity and satellite laser ranging data, with time resolutions reac…