Abstract Cold Atom Interferometry (CAI) is a promising new technology for gravity missions, enabling measurements with a potential error level that is several orders of magnitude lower compared to classical electro-static accelerometers. Whereas the latter typically suffer from high noise at low frequencies, with biases and scale factor instabilities, cold atom interferometers give an absolute measurement and are highly accurate over the entire frequency range. Especially for planetary missions, drift-free cold atom interferometry can be highly beneficial, because it does not need any on-board calibration. In this work we present the improvement of using a CAI instrument, with respect to classic Doppler-tracking technique, to retrieve the gravity field of Venus and Mars. In order to estimate the performances with many parameters (orbit altitude, mission duration, sensitivity) a scalar scale factor is proposed to fit a simulated CAI instrument on Earth orbit to other celestial bodies. The spherical harmonic degree strength of the gravitational field retrieval is estimated and the results presented here agree with Fast Error Propagation Tools.

中文翻译：

---

用于行星任务的冷原子重力测量

摘要 冷原子干涉测量法 (CAI) 是一种用于重力任务的有前途的新技术，与经典的静电加速度计相比，它能够实现潜在误差水平低几个数量级的测量。后者通常在低频下受到高噪声、偏差和比例因子不稳定性的影响，而冷原子干涉仪提供绝对测量并且在整个频率范围内都具有高度准确度。特别是对于行星任务，无漂移冷原子干涉测量非常有益，因为它不需要任何机载校准。在这项工作中，我们介绍了使用 CAI 仪器的改进，相对于经典的多普勒跟踪技术，来检索金星和火星的重力场。为了估计具有许多参数（轨道高度，任务持续时间、灵敏度）提出了一个标量比例​​因子，以将地球轨道上的模拟 CAI 仪器拟合到其他天体。估计了引力场反演的球谐度强度，这里给出的结果与快速误差传播工具一致。