In most satellite tracking operations, the gravitational field is truncated at a degree and order based on their average effects on the motion of the satellite. Even though the contribution of the higher-degree/order gravitational harmonics toward the propagation of the satellite states may be negligible as seen in isolation from other forces, their correlation with the nongravitational force coefficients can significantly affect the prediction capabilities in the tracking process. The correlation of the gravitational field with the nongravitational forces of atmospheric drag and solar radiation pressure (SRP) renders the estimates of their force coefficients nonphysical. This occurs because the magnitude of instantaneous higher-order gravitational field acceleration can be as large as the nongravitational accelerations up to degree and order 140 at 350 km altitude, even though their net effect is averaged out for long-term motion. A direct consequence of this corrupting effect is a degradation in the accuracy of predicted satellite state. Therefore, an arbitrary degree/order of truncation of the gravitational field model based only on orbit propagation is detrimental to orbit determination. It is imperative to select the degree/order depending on the altitude and factors, such as area-to-mass ratio, that affect the nonconservative forces. In this work, correlations between unmodeled gravitational forces and drag/SRP are studied across varying orbital altitudes through processing of synthetic and real data. It is demonstrated that to obtain an accuracy up to 10 m for a three-day prediction arc, a degree/order 90 gravitational field is needed at 350 km and 50 at 850 km.