Abstract
Airborne measurement of gravity has long been a goal for geodesy and geophysics, both to serve geodetic needs (such as geoid determination) and in order to provide efficient and economic mapping of gravity anomalies for geophysical exploration. Although airborne gravimetry has been attempted since the 1960s (LaCoste 1967), it is only in the 1990s, with the development of carrier-phase kinematic GPS methods, that the accuracy has reached a useful level. In later years new gravity acceleration sensors and improved GPS processing methods have resulted in airborne survey accuracies of 1 mGal (10–5 m/s2) or less at a resolution of a few kilometers for several commercial operators (Williams and MacQueen 2001), typically operating in relatively small regions for geophysical exploration and flying during optimal conditions (e.g., at night when turbulence is minimal).
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Forsberg, R., Olesen, A.V. (2010). Airborne Gravity Field Determination. In: Xu, G. (eds) Sciences of Geodesy - I. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11741-1_3
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