Faszination Astronomie Online “Mit GRACE Follow-On den Klimawandel im All spüren”

The direct measurement of the Earth's gravity field by satellites allows to sense monthly changes of Earth's mass distribution and is thus an important observation to track and understand climate change. After the GRACE satellite pair (2002-2017), observations are continued by the GRACE Follow-On (2018-) satellite tandem. The talk covers the basic measurement principle, shows some lessons learned from geodesy and climate research, and describes in detail the laser-based distance measurement, which is also used in a similar form to measure gravitational waves.