Abstract
Atmospheric drag provides an indirect approach for evaluating atmospheric mass density, which can be derived from the Precise Orbit Determination (POD) of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. A method was developed to estimate nongravitational acceleration, which includes the drag acceleration of the thermospheric density model and empirical force acceleration in the velocity direction from the centimeter-level reduced-dynamic POD. The main research achievements include the study of atmospheric responses to geomagnetic storms, especially after the launch of the spherical Qiu Qiu (QQ)-Satellite (QQ-Satellite) with the global navigation system satellite (GNSS) receiver onboard tracking the Global Positioning System (GPS) and Beidou System (BDS) data. Using this derivation method, the high-accuracy POD atmospheric density was determined from these data, resulting in better agreement among the QQ-Satellite-derived densities and the NRLMSISE-00 model densities. In addition, the POD-derived density exhibited a more sensitive response to magnetic storms. Improved accuracy of short-term orbit predictions using derived density was one of the aims of this study. Preliminary experiments using densities derived from the QQ-Satellite showed promising and encouraging results in reducing orbit propagation errors within 24 h, especially during periods of geomagnetic activity.
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