A spaceborne gravity gradiometer concept based on cold atom interferometers for measuring Earth's gravity field

Understand

We propose a concept for future space gravity missions using cold atom interferometers for measuring the diagonal elements of the gravity gradient tensor and the spacecraft angular velocity.

• The aim is to achieve better performance than previous space gravity missions due to a very low white noise spectral behavior and a very high common mode rejection, with the ultimate goals of determining the fine structures of the gravity field with higher accuracy than GOCE and detecting time-variable signals in the gravity field better than GRACE.