Satellite Geodesy

In the IAS focus group on satellite geodesy, three IAS fellows explored new methods by using highly accurate tracking data of satellite trajectories in order to gain information about variations in the gravitational field of the Earth, indicating mass movement in ocean currents, atmosphere and frozen surface of the Earth. This research thus is applied to measure the effects of climate changes, e.g., on the circumpolar currents.

Prof. Gerhard Beutler is the former Director of the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern, where the “Bernese GPS Software” was developed that has become the international standard for the scientific use of tracking data of navigational satellites (GPS, GLONASS, and in the future also GALILEO). As a Hans Fischer Senior Fellow of IAS, Beutler worked with Prof. Jäggi and Prof. Mervart from the Czech Technical University in Prague, a guest of the IAS, on developing new ideas for their so called “Celestial Mechanics” approach for gravity field recovery.

Prof. Reiner Rummel is the former head of TUM’s Institute for Astronomical and Physical Geodesy. Rummel, who is also a winner of the Bavarian best university teacher awards of 2006, was heading the project office of ESA’s GOCE satellite. The new approaches developed in the IAS focus group were tested with the GOCE data and helped with their interpretation.

Prof. Adrian Jäggi, who holds a Carl von Linde Junior Fellowship from IAS, has done his dissertational work on a generalization of the so called “reduced-dynamic approach” of determining satellite trajectories of highest accuracy using pseudo-stochastic orbit modeling. On January 1, 2012 Adrian Jäggi became the new Director of the AIUB and Professor of the Phil.- nat.-Faculty of the University of Bern.

Prof. Leos Mervart joined the focus group for some months in order to contribute to the project. Mervart, a coauthor of the Bernese GPS software, is full professor at the Institute of Geodesy of the Czech Technical University in Prague. His interests are real-time GPS applications and software engineering.

TUM-IAS funded doctoral candidate:
Weiyong Yi, Astronomical and Physical Geodesy (PhD in 2012)

Publications by the Focus Group

2012

  • Yi, Weiyong: The Earth’s gravity field from GOCE. Dissertation, 2012 mehr…

2011

  • Rummel, Reiner; Horwath, Martin; Yi, Weiyong; Albertella, Alberta; Bosch, Wolfgang; Haagmans, Roger: GOCE, Satellite Gravimetry and Antarctic Mass Transports. Surv Geophys 32 (4-5), 2011, 643-657 mehr…
  • Rummel, Reiner; Yi, Weiyong; Stummer, Claudia: GOCE gravitational gradiometry. J Geod 85 (11), 2011, 777-790 mehr…