Let’s face it, understanding the concept of ‘geocenter motion’ is not for the faint-hearted. On a good day it is only confusing, while on bad days we would rather avoid the subject all together. The story below is meant to clear the fog somewhat for those of you who have more bad days than good days. We additionally provide links to recently calculated geocenter motion time series, for those of you who want to get started with real data.

Around Christmas time last year, a falling star, caused by the reentry of the GRACE-2 satellite vehicle, marked the end of an unprecedented gravity mission. It therefore makes sense to find alternatives for the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), which can be used to bridge the gap with the GRACE Follow-on mission. A recent paper by Christina Lück et al. now shows whether the Swarm mission can help out in filling this gap.

Up to now, I never bothered to encrypt my email as my attitude was that, as a scientist, I got nothing to hide. But in light of the recently installed science-deprived administration in the US, I’m starting to think that a healthy streak of paranoia wouldn’t harm after all.