As changes in gravity are directly related to mass variability, satellite missions observing the Earth's time varying gravity field are a unique tool for observing mass transport processes in the Earth system, such as the water cycle, rapid changes in the cryosphere, oceans, and solid Earth processes, on a global scale. The observation of Earth's gravity field was successfully performed by the GRACE and GOCE satellite missions, and will be continued by the GRACE Follow-On mission. A comprehensive team of European scientists proposed the next-generation gravity field mission MOBILE in response to the European Space Agency (ESA) call for a Core Mission in the frame of Earth Explorer 10 (EE10). MOBILE is based on the innovative observational concept of a high-low tracking formation with micrometer ranging accuracy, complemented by new instrument concepts. Since a high-low tracking mission primarily observes the radial component of gravity-induced orbit perturbations, the error structure is close to isotropic. This geometry significantly reduces artefacts of previous along-track ranging low-low formations (GRACE, GRACE-Follow-On) such as the typical striping patterns. The minimum configuration consists of at least two medium-Earth orbiters (MEOs) at 10000 km altitude or higher, and one low-Earth orbiter (LEO) at 350-400 km. The main instrument is a laser-based distance or distance change measurement system, which is placed at the LEO. The MEOs are equipped either with passive reflectors or transponders. In a numerical closed-loop simulation, it was demonstrated that this minimum configuration is in agreement with the threshold science requirements of 5 mm equivalent water height (EWH) accuracy at 400 km wavelength, and 10 cm EWH at 200 km. MOBILE provides promising potential future perspectives by linking the concept to existing space infrastructure such as Galileo next-generation, as future element of the Copernicus/Sentinel programme, and holds the potential of miniaturization even up to swarm configurations. As such MOBILE can be considered as a precursor and role model for a sustained mass transport observing system from space. @en

The state-of-the-art electrostatic accelerometers (EA) used for the retrieval of non-gravitational forces acting on a satellite constitute a core component of every dedicated gravity field mission. However, due to their difficult-to-control thermal drift in the low observation frequencies, they are also one of the most limiting factors of the achievable performance of gravity recovery. Recently, a hybrid accelerometer consisting of a regular EA and a novel cold atom interferometer (CAI) that features a time-invariant observation stability and constantly recalibrates the EA has been developed in order to remedy this major drawback. In this paper we aim to assess the value of the hybrid accelerometer for gravity field retrieval in the context of GRACE-type and Bender-type missions by means of numerical closed-loop simulations where possible noise specifications of the novel instrument are considered and different components of the Earth's gravity field signal are added subsequently. It is shown that the quality of the gravity field solutions is mainly dependent on the CAI's measurement accuracy. While a low CAI performance (10 −8 to 10 −9 m/s 2 /Hz 1/2 ) does not lead to any gains compared to a stand-alone EA, a sufficiently high one (10 −11 m/s 2 /Hz 1/2 ) may improve the retrieval performance by over one order of magnitude. We also show that improvements which are limited to low-frequency observations may even propagate into high spherical harmonic degrees. Further, the accelerometer performance seems to play a less prominent role if the overall observation geometry is improved as it is the case for a Bender-type mission. The impact of the accelerometer measurements diminishes further when temporal variations of the gravity field are introduced, pointing out the need for proper de-aliasing techniques. An additional study reveals that the hybrid accelerometer is – contrary to a stand-alone EA – widely unaffected by scale factor instabilities. @en