Progress and advance in airborne gravimetry

Airborne gravimetry has been rapid development during the past decades and becomes one of the very active topics of the research in the gravity field. It shows three different approaches to airborne gravimetry, namely scalar gravimetry, vector gravimetry and gravity gradiometry. Recent activities for the airborne scalar gravimetry are summarized in this paper, they includes five aspects, viz. improvement of traditional airborne scalar gravity systems, development of new system concepts, optimization of acceleration deriving from DGPS, optimization of filtering and estimation methods, and the application of airborne gravity data in various mapping and exploration applications. Finally, the Chinese airborne gravimetry system that has broke into success in 2002 is introduced briefly.