[Baps] Draper Seminar Mon 12/16 Dr. Brian Gunter, Satellite Constellation Geodesy

[Kerri Cahoy]

“Future Concepts in Space Geodesy Using Satellite Constellations”



Speaker: Dr. Brian Gunter

Georgia Institute of Technology






*Draper Distinguished Speaker series will take place Monday, December 16,
2013 at noon in Room 1409.  Feel free to bring lunch. *


*Abstract:*



The ability to measure temporal gravity field variations from space
provides a unique source of information that is critical to understanding
the complex processes governing the global water cycle and Earth's response
to climate change.  Dedicated gravity field missions, such as NASA’s
Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), have demonstrated the
value of this time-variable gravity information by revealing a host of new
insights into processes such as the seasonal flux of water in the Amazon
basin, the loss of ice in Greenland and Antarctica, and the depletion of
underground aquifers in Northern India.  Despite the tremendous success of
GRACE, its temporal resolution is limited to approximately one month, due
almost entirely to the limitations of the mission's ground track coverage.
There are many mass transport processes (e.g., atmosphere, continental
hydrology, non-tidal ocean, etc.) that have cycles much shorter than one
month, and which are currently accounted for with models in the GRACE data
pre-processing. This highlights the fact that, with only one satellite
pair, to get higher spatial resolution, one must sacrifice temporal
resolution, and vice-versa; the only way to improve both is to increase the
number of satellites involved.  This talk will address how this might be
achieved through the use of an array of custom-built nanosat class
satellites, or through future-planned communication and radio-occultation
constellations.  The results suggest that such constellations can observe
the large-scale (> 1000 km) gravity signals to an accuracy of below 1 mm
geoid height at time scales as short as 1 day.  In addition, the results
would be highly complementary to future dedicated gravity field missions
such as GRACE follow-on.



*Biography:*



*Dr. Gunter* is an Assistant Professor in Aerospace Engineering at the
Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his B.S. in mechanical
engineering from Rice University, and later his M.S. and Ph.D. in aerospace
engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in orbital
mechanics.  Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Dr. Gunter was on the faculty of
the Delft University of Technology (TU-Delft) in the Netherlands, as a
member of the Physical and Space Geodesy section.  His research activities
involve various aspects of spacecraft missions and their applications, such
as investigations into current and future laser altimetry missions,
monitoring changes in the polar ice sheets using satellite data,
applications of satellite constellations, and topics surrounding kinematic
orbit determination.  He has been responsible for both undergraduate and
graduate courses on topics such as satellite orbit determination, Earth and
planetary observation, scientific applications of GPS, and space systems
design.  He is currently a member of the AIAA Astrodynamics Technical
Committee, and also serves as the Geodesy chair for the Fall AGU Meeting
Program Committee.  He has received a NASA group achievement award for his
work on the GRACE mission, and he is also a former recipient of a NASA
Earth System Science Graduate Fellowship.  He is a member of the American
Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the American Geophysical
Union (AGU), and the International Association of Geodesy (IAG).

-- 
Kerri Cahoy
Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 37-367
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Cell phone: 650 814-8148
Office phone: 617 324-6005
E-mail: kcahoy at mit.edu, kerri.cahoy at gmail.com
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