In the past twenty years, gravimetry missions have demonstrated a unique capability to monitor major climate-related changes of the Earth directly from space – quantifying the melt of large glaciers and ice sheets, global sea level rise, continental draught, major flooding events, and also effects of large earthquakes and tsunamis.
More satellites and new technological developments are already ongoing both on the NASA (GRACE-C) and ESA side (Next Generation Gravity field Mission) using satellite-satellite tracking. However, higher temporal and spatial gravity resolution needed will lead to requirements, which in the long-term cannot be reached by classical technologies alone.
Whereas classical accelerometers suffer from high noise at low frequencies, cold atom interferometers (CAI) are highly accurate over the entire frequency range and do not suffer from long term drift. Several studies related to these new sensor concepts were initiated at ESA, mainly focusing on technology development for different instrument configurations (gravity gradiometers and satellite-to-satellite ranging systems) and including validation activities, e.g. three successful airborne surveys with a CAI gravimeter. A combination of classical sensors with CAI, or at a later stage a full quantum sensor will bring up to sensitivity that will open to many application and user needs with respect to water management and hazard prevention.
Development of atom interferometry instruments for ESA is not only focus for Earth Observation and gravity mission purposes but will open the scope of many space applications in several directorate at ESA, already initiated in different programme in SCI (Voyage 2050), HRE (iSOC) or NAV (NAVISP).
The talk will present an overview of ESA activities on CAI, as well as the various opportunities for industry and academy to participate to the development of such instrument in various ESA applications/directorates.