Abstract
For low Earth orbiting satellites, non-gravitational forces cause one of the largest perturbing accelerations. During a precise orbit determination (POD), the accurate modeling of the satellite-body attitude and solar panel orientation is important since the satellite’s effective cross-sectional area is directly related to the perturbing acceleration. Moreover, the position of tracking instruments that are mounted on the satellite body are affected by the satellite attitude. For satellites like Jason-1/-2/-3, attitude information is available in two forms—as a so-called nominal yaw steering model and as observation-based (measured by star tracking cameras) quaternions of the spacecraft body orientation and rotation angles of the solar arrays. In this study, we have developed a preprocessing procedure for publicly available satellite attitude information. We computed orbits based on Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) observations to the Jason satellites at an overall time interval of approximately 25 years, using each of the two satellite attitude representations. Based on the analysis of the orbits, we investigate the influence of using preprocessed observation-based attitude in contrast to using a nominal yaw steering model for the POD. About 75% of all orbital arcs calculated with the observation-based satellite attitude data result in a smaller root mean square (RMS) of residuals. More precisely, the resulting orbits show an improvement in the overall mission RMS of SLR observation residuals of 5.93% (Jason-1), 8.27% (Jason-2) and 4.51% (Jason-3) compared to the nominal attitude realization. Besides the satellite orbits, also the estimated station coordinates benefit from the refined attitude handling, that is, the station repeatability is clearly improved at the draconitic period. Moreover, altimetry analysis indicates a clear improvement of the single-satellite crossover differences (6%, 15%, and 16% reduction of the mean of absolute differences and 1.2%, 2.7%, and 1.3% of their standard deviations for Jason-1/-2/-3, respectively). On request, the preprocessed attitude data are available.
Highlights
Artificial near-Earth satellites are nowadays an effective instrument for Earth observations and the monitoring of global change phenomena
The phase center locations of positioning devices such as a laser ranging array (LRA), a Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) receiver and a Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receiver required in the inertial reference frame depend on the satellite orientation in space
The International DORIS Service (IDS) Analysis Centers (ACs) at NASA/GSFC (National Aeronautics and Space Administration/Goddard Space Flight Center) [11] used attitude observations given as satellite body quaternions and solar panel rotation angles for their contribution
Summary
Artificial near-Earth satellites are nowadays an effective instrument for Earth observations and the monitoring of global change phenomena. Altimetry satellites provide a continuous data record of global and regional sea level change, see, for example, Reference [1] Data from these satellites allow the investigation of ocean dynamics (large- and small-scale circulation, ocean tides, waves, El Nino-Southern Oscillation, coastal processes, etc.), the cryosphere, dynamics of land surface waters, and seafloor topography [2]. The accuracy and stability of altimetry satellite orbits significantly improved in recent decades due to enhancements in, amongst others, modeling the Earth’s time-variable gravity field [5], reference frame determination [6,7], and improvements in modeling non-gravitational perturbations [8,9] Altimetry satellites such as Jason-1/-2/-3 have a non-spherical, complex shape comprising the main satellite body on which solar panels and numerous measurement and positioning instruments are mounted. Another example of the use of observation-based attitude information can be found for the CryoSat-2 satellite [12]
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