Abstract
The Korean Multipurpose Satellite-5 (KOMPSAT-5) launched on 22 August 2013 was equipped with a global positioning system (GPS) receiver for precision orbit determination (POD). Even though the GPS receiver of KOMPSAT-5 shares the same heritage as the BlackJack receiver onboard in Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, KOMPSAT-5 has a lower orbital position accuracy (~10 cm) compared with GRACE (~2 cm). The reduced dynamic and kinematic methods are applied for POD of KOMPSAT-5 and GRACE to investigate the GPS observation quality due to the satellite operation concept and hardware design. The results are analyzed in terms of the number of observations and their spatial distribution, GPS signal quality, and orbital position accuracies. The results show that the frequent attitude maneuvers of KOMPSAT-5 affect the quality of the GPS signals and solutions obtained from the kinematic method compared with that determined from the reduced-dynamic method. The onboard patch GPS antenna installed in KOMPSAT-5 and its geometrical position resulted in more erratic measurement residuals by 140% compared with the choke ring antenna of GRACE. The POD accuracy is dependent on the hardware design and regular attitude tilting for the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging even though the same GPS receiver performances.
Highlights
Precision orbit determination (POD) plays a critical role for satellite missions such as geodesy, precise image processing, and ground track maintenance
The KOMPSAT-5 satellite is equipped with a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver for POD and radio occultation study, which is the secondary task of the satellite
A patch GPS antenna is installed onboard of KOMPSAT-5 to balance with other payloads, which differs from the choke ring GPS antenna used in the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites
Summary
Precision orbit determination (POD) plays a critical role for satellite missions such as geodesy, precise image processing, and ground track maintenance. KOMPSAT-5 performs attitude maneuvers when the satellite passes over the Korean Peninsula for SAR imaging, and the detailed information for these attitude maneuvers is not available to the public, whereas the information for the GRACE satellites such as the antenna reference points, mass for fuel consumption, and attitude solutions from the star sensors are released publicly and they are used in improving the POD results Based on these differences, it cannot be assumed that the orbital position accuracy of KOMPSAT-5 would be the same as that for GRACE even though the GPS receivers of both satellites share the same heritage.
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