GOCE - Earth Online

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3D Earth Online Visuals application takes off

A new app has just been launched, enabling you to explore ESA’s satellite missions in 3D and providing a new perspective on how satellite data contribute to our understanding of Earth systems, the climate, and their interactions.

Pioneering science missions: Summarising ESA’s Earth Explorers

Designed for research purposes, ESA's Earth Explorer missions are dedicated to monitoring parts of Earth’s system. Learn more about the Earth Explorers in this video.

GOCE magnetometer data now available to support Swarm Sciences

We are pleased to announce the new release of magnetic field data recorded by Fluxgate magnetometers operated onboard the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite.

Data preservation takes centre stage at Living Planet Symposium

Against the backdrop of the famed Rhine River, world-class scientists and Earth observation data-users are gathered this week in the historical city of Bonn, at the Living Planet Symposium (LPS).

Living Planet Symposium 2022: Call for proposals

ESA is now accepting proposals for sessions at the next Living Planet Symposium – set to take place on 23–27 May 2022 at the World Conference Centre in Bonn, Germany.

About GOCE

ESA's Gravity field and Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) orbited as close to Earth as possible - just 260 km up - to maximise its sensitivity to variations in Earth's gravity field with unprecedented accuracy and spatial resolution. GOCE's state-of-the-art gradiometer mapped Earth's geoid very accurately, opening a window into Earth's interior structure as well as the currents circulating within the depths of its oceans.

The final gravity map and model of the geoid, provided users worldwide with well-defined data products that are instrumental in advancing science and applications in a broad range of disciplines. Although its flight is over, the wealth of data from GOCE continues to be exploited to improve our understanding of geodesy, geophysics, surveying, ocean circulation, oceanography, sea level, ice dynamics and Earth’s interior.

GOCE was launched on 17 March 2009 and came to an end on 21 October 2013 when it ran out of fuel and re-entered the atmosphere on 11 November 2013.

GOCE Objectives

GOCE

The GOCE mission objectives were based on the unique capability of a gravity gradiometer to provide an accurate and detailed global model of Earth's gravity field and geoid. This model served the following multi-disciplinary scientific objectives:

Providing a new understanding of the physics of Earth´s interior including geodynamics associated with the lithosphere, mantle composition and rheology, uplifting and subduction processes.
Providing a precise estimate of the marine geoid, needed for the quantitative determination, in combination with satellite altimetry, of absolute ocean currents and their transport of heat and other properties.
Providing a better global height reference system for datum connection, which can serve as a reference surface for the study of topographic processes, such as the evolution of ice-sheets and land surface.
Providing estimates of the thickness of the polar ice sheets through the combination of bedrock topography derived from gradiometry and ice-sheet surface topography from altimetry.

Advances in each of these areas of research benefited developments in others, including the study of global sea-level change.

GOCE Instruments

The **Electrostatic Gravity Gradiometer (EGG)** measured gravity gradients in all directions with a set of six 3-axis accelerometers. It was specifically designed for the stationary gravity field – measuring the geoid and gravity anomalies with high accuracy and high spatial resolution.
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The **Satellite to Satellite Tracking Instrument (SSTI)** supplemented the gradiometer measurements and acquired signals from up to 12 satellites in the GPS constellation, to deliver measurements on both GPS frequencies as well as realtime orbit navigation solutions.
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GOCE INSTRUMENTS

GOCE DATA

GOCE TOOLS