Print Email Facebook Twitter Cold atom gravimetry for planetary missions Title Cold atom gravimetry for planetary missions Author Müller, Fabian (European Space Agency (ESA)) Carraz, Olivier (European Space Agency (ESA)) Visser, P.N.A.M. (TU Delft Astrodynamics & Space Missions) Witasse, Olivier (European Space Agency (ESA)) Date 2020 Abstract Cold Atom Interferometry (CAI) is a promising new technology for gravity missions, enabling measurements with a potential error level that is several orders of magnitude lower compared to classical electro-static accelerometers. Whereas the latter typically suffer from high noise at low frequencies, with biases and scale factor instabilities, cold atom interferometers give an absolute measurement and are highly accurate over the entire frequency range. Especially for planetary missions, drift-free cold atom interferometry can be highly beneficial, because it does not need any on-board calibration. In this work we present the improvement of using a CAI instrument, with respect to classic Doppler-tracking technique, to retrieve the gravity field of Venus and Mars. In order to estimate the performances with many parameters (orbit altitude, mission duration, sensitivity) a scalar scale factor is proposed to fit a simulated CAI instrument on Earth orbit to other celestial bodies. The spherical harmonic degree strength of the gravitational field retrieval is estimated and the results presented here agree with Fast Error Propagation Tools. To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:02d826ba-aab1-45b3-80dd-c0fefb382e41 DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pss.2020.105110 Embargo date 2022-10-17 ISSN 0032-0633 Source Planetary and Space Science, 194 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights © 2020 Fabian Müller, Olivier Carraz, P.N.A.M. Visser, Olivier Witasse Files PDF 3379597.3387453.pdf 730.18 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:02d826ba-aab1-45b3-80dd-c0fefb382e41/datastream/OBJ/view