Abstract. Between the years 2004 and 2005 the launch of the first gradiometric satellite is planned. This satellite will be an important element of the Gravity Field and Steady – State Ocean Circulation Explorer Mission (GOCE). This mission is one of the reasons for performing the simulation research of the Satellite Gravity Gradiometry. Our work contains the theory description and simulation results of the satellite orbit determination using the gravity tensor observations. In the process of the satellite orbit determination the initial dynamic state vector corrections are obtained. These corrections are estimated by means of the gravity gradiometry measurements. The performed simulations confirm the possibility of satellite orbit determination by means of the gravity tensor observations.Key words. satellite geodesy, satellite gradiometry, satellite orbits
values for the computed orbits (without the improvement). The most promising results were achieved when short orbital arcs with lengths up to tens of minutes were improved. For these short arcs, the RMS values reach the level of centimeters, which is close to the accuracy of the Precise Science Orbit for the GOCE satellite. Additional research has provided requirements for efficient orbit improvement in terms of the accuracy and spectral content of the measured gravity gradients.
This work contains a comparative study of the performance of six geopotential models in an orbit estimation process of the satellite of the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) mission. For testing, such models as ULUX_CHAMP2013S, ITG-GRACE 2010S, EIGEN-51C, EIGEN5S, EGM2008, EGM96, were adopted. Different sets of pseudo-range simulations along reference GOCE satellite orbital arcs were obtained using real orbits of the Global Positioning System satellites. These sets were the basic observation data used in the adjustment. The centimeter-accuracy Precise Science Orbit (PSO) for the GOCE satellite provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) was adopted as the GOCE reference orbit. Comparing various variants of the orbital solutions, the relative accuracy of geopotential models in an orbital aspect is determined. Full geopotential models were used in the adjustment process. The solutions were also determined taking into account truncated geopotential models. In such case, an accuracy of the solutions was slightly enhanced. Different arc lengths were taken for the computation.
A new optimization method presented in this work – the Least m-Order Central Moments method, is a generalization of the Least Squares method. It allows fitting a geometric object into a set of points in such a way that the maximum shift between the object and the points after fitting is smaller than in the Least Squares method. This property can be very useful in some engineering tasks, e.g. in the realignment of a railway track or gantry rails. The theoretical properties of the proposed optimization method are analyzed. The computational problems are discussed. The appropriate computational techniques are proposed to overcome these problems. The detailed computational algorithm and formulas of iterative processes have been derived. The numerical tests are presented, in order to illustrate the operation of proposed techniques. The results have been analyzed, and the conclusions were then formulated.
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