The GOCE Science Data Processing Facility

The systematic GOCE science data processing will be performed by a consortium of ten European university institutes and research facilities under contract of the European Space Agency (ESA). This so-called High Level Processing Facility for GOCE (HPF) currently is under development and will produce during the operational phase GOCE level 2 products on a systematic base. These level 2 products are rapid and precise orbits and gravity field models of different kind, derived from the highly precise GOCE gradiometry observations, the GPS satellite-to-satellite tracking data and additional measurements. While quick-look gravity field analysis mainly is of interest for the GOCE performance monitoring, the final and precise gravity field model will represent the official ESA GOCE gravity field model. In order to optimally exploit the GOCE data, within the consortium three different analysis techniques for gradiometry and GPS-SST are implemented and operated in parallel. All models undergo a thorough validation procedure before the official ESA solution will be selected out of them. The paper summarizes the architecture of the HPF, the status of its development and provides an overview of the planned products and their characteristics. Special attention is given to the gravity field analysis techniques applied within the HPF.