Welcome to the Web page showing the collection of research activities and applications developed by the Satellite Geodesy group, active at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Politecnico di Milano.

The Satellite Geodesy group at Polimi has a history dating back to the beginning of the Eighties under the leadership of Prof. Fernando Sansò, now a Professor Emeritus of Politecnico di Milano.
The group includes professors, researchers and Ph.D. candidates working on topics of global and local gravity field modelling and, more generally, geospatial data analysis and geostatistics. In the last twenty or so years we have participated in several research projects, notably the data processing of the European Space Agency (ESA) mission GOCE (Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer).

A specific feature of our research group is the theoretical development and numerical application of the so-called “space-wise” approach to the analysis of satellite data for the estimation of models of the Earth gravity field.

More recently, we have proposed and studied new mission concepts for the determination of the Earth gravity field, based on quantum sensors. These studies were developed during the projects MOCASS (Mass Observation with Cold Atom Sensors in Space) and MOCAST+ (MOnitoring mass variations by Cold Atom Sensors and Time measures), both funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI). A quantum gravimetry mission could provide the static Earth gravity field and its variations over long time span (possibly a full solar cycle) with the spatial and temporal resolution enabling the investigation and monitoring (with unprecedented detail) of geophysical phenomena involving mass distribution and transport in the atmosphere, continental hydrosphere, oceans, cryosphere, and lithosphere.