Accuracy of Numerical Algorithms for Satellite Orbit Propagation and Gravity Field Determination

McCullough, Christopher; Bettadpur, Srinivas; McDonald, Karl

doi:10.2514/1.a33008

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 21 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…(2019) presented an improved ACC data transplant approach, which includes the modeling of residual linear accelerations due to thruster firings, in addition to the attitude and time correction. The modeling of thruster spikes has been studied before both on ACC1B (Meyer et al., 2011) and ACC Level‐1A (ACC1A) (McCullough et al., 2015) using a statistical approach. However, Bandikova et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Bandikova et al (2019) presented an improved ACC data transplant approach, which includes the modeling of residual linear accelerations due to thruster firings, in addition to the attitude and time correction. The modeling of thruster spikes has been studied before both on ACC1B (Meyer et al, 2011) and ACC Level-1A (ACC1A) (McCullough et al, 2015) using a statistical approach. However, Bandikova et al (2019) show that by determining the dynamic system, which generates the impulse response of each thruster pair, one can improve the estimates of the spikes and reduce the noise in gravity field solutions.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

GRACE Follow‐On Accelerometer Data Recovery

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission (Landerer et al., 2020) was successfully started on 22 May 2018, and since then, provides high-quality observations to continue the gravity field time series of its predecessor, the GRACE mission (2002( -2017( ) (Tapley et al., 2004. Similar to GRACE, both satellites in GRACE-FO mission are equipped with high precision accelerometers to measure the non-gravitational forces (e.g., atmospheric drag and radiation pressure), as well as disturbances due to satellite's operation, such as attitude thruster activation. With the aim of gravity field recovery, these measurements are essential to reduce the effects of non-gravitational perturbations from the orbit and obtain the sought-after gravitational components.Early studies have shown that the accelerometer measurements (ACC) from both GRACE-FO satellites are contaminated by different types of noise. Therefore, the standard GRACE Level-1A to Level-1B processing (Wu et al., 2006) does not deliver ACC Level-1B (ACC1B) products with sufficient accuracy for gravity field recovery. For this reason, the GRACE-FO Science Data System (SDS) team has developed specific calibration process for the accelerometer on each satellite and has provided the calibrated GRACE-FO accelerometer data (ACT) products (McCullough et al., 2019).

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

GRACE Follow‐On Accelerometer Data Recovery

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To mitigate low efficiency of quadruple precision calculations, great effort was made on optimizing code execution to have reduced the run time significantly. Other quadruple precision orbit simulations can be found in, e.g., [28,29].…”

Section: Simulation and Force Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of Earth-Moon's gravity on TianQin's range acceleration noise

Zhang,

Luo,

Jiao

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

TianQin is a proposed space gravitational-wave detection mission using circular high Earth orbits. The geocentric concept has raised questions about the disturbing effect of the nearby gravity field of the Earth-Moon system on the highly-sensitive intersatellite ranging measurements. Here we examine the issue through high precision numerical orbit simulation with detailed gravity-field models. By evaluating range accelerations between distant free-falling test masses, the study shows that the majority of the Earth-Moon's gravity disturbances are not in TianQin's detection frequency band above 10 −4 Hz, and hence present no showstoppers to the mission.

show abstract

GRACE accelerometer data transplant

Bandikova

McCullough

Kruizinga

et al. 2019

Advances in Space Research

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the last few months of GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) mission operation, the accelerometer (ACC) aboard GRACE-B was turned off due to battery problems. In order to compute a gravity field model for these months, a data processing strategy was developed to retrieve the missing information, the so called Accelerometer data transplant. The ACC data transplant uses linear accelerations as measured by the GRACE-A accelerometer to generate the missing GRACE-B ACC data. A simple method of ACC data transplant was presented by Save et al. (2006), which only applies attitude and time correction due to orbit separation. In this paper we present an improved method of the ACC data transplant, which also includes thruster spike correction. The thruster spikes are residual linear accelerations occurring at each thruster firing caused by thruster imperfections and misbalance. We provide detailed description of the thruster spike model, which was derived analytically based on the ACC transfer function and 10 Hz ACC data. Using the transplanted ACC data we computed the gravity field models for the months with missing GRACE-B ACC data (November 2016-June 2017). We show that the gravity field model based on in the improved ACC data transplant has significantly reduced noise, especially for degrees beyond the first orbital resonance, when compared to the simple transplant method. The improved ACC transplant became therefore a part of the processing standards for the upcoming JPL RL06 gravity solution.

show abstract

Accuracy of Numerical Algorithms for Satellite Orbit Propagation and Gravity Field Determination

Cited by 5 publications

References 21 publications

GRACE Follow‐On Accelerometer Data Recovery

GRACE Follow‐On Accelerometer Data Recovery

Effect of Earth-Moon's gravity on TianQin's range acceleration noise

GRACE accelerometer data transplant

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About