With the GRACE mission reaching the end of it's predicted lifespan in the next few years, studies of possible follow-up missions are well underway. We investigate the sensivity of different possible orbit constellations w.r.t. a given geophysical signal. We use the Sumatra-Andaman and Nias earthquakes - strongly localised signals which are known to be near the accuracy limits of GRACE. We use Kaulas linear perturbation theory to generate error characteristics for different possible orbit constellations in the form of full covariance matrices. Both the covariance matrices, as well as a model describing both earthquakes are expanded in a directional wavelet basis to get series of spatiospectral signal-to noise ratios. Based on these, as well as comparison with GRACE data, we suggest to which extent the events would be detectable by each mission.

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Einarsson, I.; Petrick, C. (2009): Case-based sensitivity analysis for different satellite gravity mission constellations. Abstracts, Geodätische Woche (Karlsruhe 2009), 19.