GRACE Mission Status and Gravity Field Product Improvement Plans

Approximately two years of gravity field data products from the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment were recently made available to the user community. These gravity field products are dubbed Release 01, and are associated with a specific set of background models & data processing methods used in their creation. Work is presently underway within the GRACE Science Data System, aimed at updating the Level\-1 data products, and the Level\-2 background models and processing methods within the next several months, eventually to result in improved Release 02 data products. Within this context, this paper presents a brief overview of the mission status, followed by a discussion of near-term processing plans for upgrading the gravity field products from GRACE. Product quality enhancements anticipated in the next release, including improved accuracy and spatial resolution, as well as prospects for improvements in temporal sampling of the gravity field are discussed.