The minerals exploration industry’s demand for a highly precise airborne gravity gradiometer has driven development of the VK1™ Airborne Gravity Gradiometer, a collaborative effort by Rio Tinto and the University of Western Australia. VK1™ aims to provide gravity gradient data with lower uncertainty and higher spatial resolution than current commercial systems. In the recent years of VK1™ development, there have been significant improvements in hardware, signal processing and data processing which have combined to result in a complete AGG system that is approaching competitive survey-ready status. This paper focuses on recent improvements. Milestone-achieving data from recent lab-based and moving-platform trials will be presented and discussed, along with details of some advanced data processing techniques that are required to make the most use of the data.