The Swarm satellites carry accelerometers as part of their scientific payload. These instruments measure the non-gravitational acceleration due to forces like drag or radiation pressure acting on the spacecraft, from which thermospheric neutral densities and potentially winds can be derived. Unfortunately, the acceleration measurements suffer from a variety of perturbations, the most prominent being slow temperature-induced bias variations and sudden bias changes. Other less prominent perturbation includes spikes and artificial periodic signals. Though all perturbation are visible in the measurements of all Swarm accelerometers, their severity is much different for the three Swarm satellites. In this presentation, we illustrate all known disturbances and assess their severity for scientific exploitation of the accelerometer data separately for each Swarm satellite. @en

The Swarm satellites carry accelerometers and GPS receivers as part of their scientific payload. The GPS receivers are not only used for locating the position and time of the magnetic measurements, but also for determining non-gravitational forces like drag and radiation pressure acting on the spacecraft. The accelerometers measure these forces directly, at much finer resolution than the GPS receivers, from which thermospheric neutral densities and potentially winds can be derived. Unfortunately, the acceleration measurements suffer from a variety of disturbances, the most prominent being slow temperature-induced bias variations and sudden bias changes. These disturbances required significant changes to the processing algorithms, which as a side effect caused a significant delay of the accelerometer data release. In this presentation, we describe the new processing that is required for transforming the disturbed acceleration measurements into scientifically valuable thermospheric neutral densities. In the first stage, the sudden bias changes in the acceleration measurements are removed using a dedicated software tools. We present a new option of automated step detection and correction, which should speed up the accelerometer data release. The second stage is the calibration of the accelerometer measurements against the nongravitational accelerations derived from the GPS receiver, which includes the correction for the slow temperature-induced bias variations. The identification of validity periods for calibration and correction parameters is part of the second stage. In the third stage, the calibrated and corrected accelerations a merged with the non-gravitational accelerations derived from the GPS receiver by a weighted average in the spectral domain, where the weights depend on the frequency. The fourth stage consists of transforming the corrected and calibrated accelerations into thermospheric neutral densities. We describe the methods used in each stage, highlight the difficulties encountered, and comment on the quality of the thermospheric neutral density data set. @en

N ext Generation Gravity Missions (NGGMs) expected to be launched in the mid-term future have set high anticipations for an enhanced monitoring of mass transport in the Earth system, establishing their products applicable to new scientific fields and serving societal needs. The European Space Agency (ESA) has issued several studies on concepts of NGGMs. Following this tradition, the project “Additional Constellations & Scientific Analysis Studies of the Next Generation Gravity Mission” picks up where the previous study ESA-SC4MGV left off. One of the ESA-ADDCON project objectives is to investigate the impact of different orbit configurations and parameters on the gravity field retrieval. Given a two-pair Bender-type constellation, consisting of a polar and an inclined pair, choices for orbit design such as the altitude profile during mission lifetime, the length of retrieval period, the value of sub-cycles and the choice of a prograde over a retrograde orbit are investigated. Moreover, the problem of aliasing due to ocean tide model inaccuracies, as well as methods for mitigating their effect on gravity field solutions are investigated in the context of NGGMs. The performed simulations make use of the gravity field processing approach where low-resolution gravity field solutions are co-parameterized in short-term periods (e.g. daily) together with the long-term solutions (e.g. 11-day solution). This method proved to be beneficial for NGGMs (ESA-SC4MGV project) since the enhanced spatio-temporal sampling enables a selfde- aliasing of high-frequency atmospheric and oceanic signals, which may now be a part of the retrieved signal. The @en