Oct 2026· GRACE/GRACE-FO Science Team Meeting 2026· 0 citations
Abstract
Since 2018, the GRACE Follow-On satellite mission, a partnership between NASA (US) and GFZ (Germany), is continuing the unique essential climate data record of mass change in the Earth system initiated in 2002 by the GRACE mission (2002-2017). The combined GRACE & GRACE-FO data records now span over 22 years and provide foundational observations of monthly to decadal global mass changes and transports in the Earth system derived from temporal variations in the Earth’s gravity field. These observations have become indispensable for climate-related studies that enable process understanding of the evolving global water cycle, including ocean dynamics, polar ice mass changes, and near-surface and global ground water changes.We will present recent GRACE/GRACE-FO science and applications highlights, status of the data processing, calibration approaches, performance of last year’s science data, and discuss the GRACE-FO mission operations plan to collect and provide high-quality science data, aiming for overlap with the upcoming NASA/DLR GRACE-Continuity mission, targeted to launch in late 2028.
GRACE-Continuity (GRACE-C) is a joint NASA (US) & DLR (Germany) mission, scheduled for launch in Dec-2028. It will continue the essential data record of Earth system gravity and mass change initiated by the original GRACE mission (2002-2017) and currently enabled by the GRACE-FO mission (2018 – present). The GRACE-seri...
F. Landerer, D. Wiese, W. Klipstein et al.· GRACE/GRACE-FO Science Team...· 0 citations
The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO), launched in May 2018, provides invaluable information about mass change in the Earth system, continuing the legacy of GRACE. Fundamental requirements for successful mass change recovery are precise orbit determination and inter-satellite ranging, determi...
C. Mccullough, Willy Bertiger, S. Byun et al.· GRACE/GRACE-FO Science Team...· 0 citations
The major objective of the GRACE Follow On (GFO) mission with its two satellites GF1 and GF2 is to obtain precise global and high-resolution models for both the static and the time variable components of the Earth's gravity field. Additional goal is the continuation of the GPS radio occultation (RO) measurements from t...
T. Schmidt, Patrick Schreiner, J. Wickert· GRACE/GRACE-FO Science Team...· 0 citations
Inter-satellite ranging by space gravimetry missions, such as from the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission and its successor mission GRACE Follow-On, has been established to observe mass variations in the Earth system from space globally. A complex processing chain is needed to invert the instrument...
A. Jäggi, A. Güntner, Ulrich Meyer et al.· Surveys in geophysics· 0 citations
The ESA-SING dataset has been created within the ESA-SING project to investigate current and future satellite gravity mission concepts. These synthetic observations support mission-impact studies within the ESA-SING project, evaluating the added value of the NGGM and MAGIC missions for scientific applications and opera...
M. Schlaak, J. Pfeffer, R. Pail et al.· GRACE/GRACE-FO Science Team...· 0 citations
Since 2002, the GRACE and GRACE-FO satellite missions have been monitoring monthly variations in the gravitational field caused by mass redistributions within the Earth’s system. To extract information on the global and regional water cycle, estimates of the gravity field must be corrected to account for several instru...
Alexandre Boughanemi, Alejandro Blazquez, M. Bouih et al.· GRACE/GRACE-FO Science Team...· 0 citations
