Abstract The gravitational gradients along the orbit observed by GOCE satellite is given in the gradiometer coordinate system（GRF）while the Earth’s gravity field model from gradients is generally in noninstrument coordinate system.Due to GOCE can not measure full tensor gradient efficiently，it is necessary to replace VXY、VYZ as model values and to converse coordinate system of gradient.Therefore，in the rotation process，the error of the gradients data and the error of the rotation matrix have be taken into account.A pointwise rotation model of gradients in various coordinate systems and analysis the impact of various errors in conversion process of gradients were described，and gradients tensor rotation strategy is discussed simultaneously.Actual processing results show that the attitude error of the GOCE meets the design requirements，but the quality of GOCE gradients tensor，is not good for containing a large number of lowfrequency colored noises，which needs to filter before conversion.In addition，“removerestore” method can significantly improve the accuracy.
