Geometric improvement of the spot satellite orbit using Doris Doppler residual data
Abstract
The residuals of tracking data from a Doppler satellite tracking network are used to further adjust geometrically the orbit, the station coordinates, and Doppler biases and drifts for each station. After extensive testing in simulation, the method is applied to 21 d of the DORIS data from the SPOT2 satellite. The orbit reproducibility in the tangential direction is reduced from 40-100 cm rms with a classical dynamical orbit calculation to 7-32 cm rms for the geometrical orbit, based on the difference between 2-day orbit arcs overlapping over 1 d. The reproducibility in the radial direction is slightly improved to 6-30 cm rms on the same arcs, with the most significant effect on the 1/revolution frequency. The formal error is also mostly reduced on this frequency. The Doppler residuals are reduced from 2-13 to 0.7-1.4 mm/s. Five-day orbit arcs of this improved orbit are used to recalculate station positions. It is demonstrated that the improved reproducibility corresponds to an improved accuracy.
- Publication:
-
Journal of Geophysical Research
- Pub Date:
- October 1992
- Bibcode:
- 1992JGR....9715405N
- Keywords:
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- Orbit Calculation;
- Satellite Doppler Positioning;
- Satellite Orbits;
- Satellite Tracking;
- Spot (French Satellite);
- Root-Mean-Square Errors;
- Tracking Stations