The Success Of Satellite Gravimetry In Geophysical Investigations

Terrestrial measurements of gravity data are limited to only accessible areas. Areas that are not easily accessible due to lack of access route, security, cost etc. are found unfavorable for terrestrial measurements. These among others lead to the development of satellites to fill those gaps. Satellites have been used for data acquisition for years and have recorded a great success in numerous ways. This paper presents the principle of operation of such satellites. The successful geophysical researches carried out using satellite acquired gravity data from existing literature were also discussed. The researches applied the satellite gravity data for numerous applications notably ground water survey, hydrology, geothermal survey, Mineral and hydrocarbon explorations, lithological characterization (Edge/boundary detection, depth estimation), Modeling of magma chamber, volcanic subsurface survey, characterization of upper atmospheric density etc. Satellite gravity survey is found to be very essential and relatively more advantageous compared to terrestrial survey because the human effort in data acquisition is less, it has wider coverage in small time, access to places that cannot be accessed on ground. It is therefore recommended that the functions of the satellites should be further expanded using new innovations like machine learning and artificial intelligence in order to increase efficiency.