Exploring the possibilities for star-tracker assisted calibration of the six individual GOCE accelerometers

A method has been developed and tested for estimating calibration parameters for the six accelerometers on board the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) from star tracker observations. These six accelerometers are part of the gradiometer, which is the prime instrument on board GOCE. It will be shown that by taking appropriate combinations of observations collected by the accelerometers, by modeling acceleration terms caused by gravity gradients from an a priori low-degree spherical harmonic expansion, and by modeling rotational acceleration terms derived from star-tracker observations, scale factors of each of the accelerometers can be estimated for each axis. Simulated observations from a so-called end-to-end simulator were used to test the method. This end-to-end simulator includes a detailed model of the GOCE satellite, its instruments and instrument errors, and its environment. Results of the tests indicate that scale factors of all six accelerometers can be determined with an accuracy of around 0.01 for all components on a daily basis.