Rosborough representations are known from and used in satellite altimetry. The radial orbit perturbation is represented in spherical coordinates and separated into a geographically mean (ascending plus descending) and a geographically variable (ascending minus descending) part. This principle is easily generalized to any functional of the gravitational field, observed along the orbit. Therefore, this type of representation can be used for gravity field recovery from missions like GRACE and GOCE.