High-precision physics-based radiation force models for the Galileo spacecraft

Bhattarai, Santosh; Ziebart, Marek; Springer, T.; Gonzalez, Francisco; Tobías, Guillermo

doi:10.1016/j.asr.2022.04.003

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Proper modeling of the SRP is a prerequisite for an accurate determination of PCO values (Steigenberger et al 2016). In the GNSS literature, three concepts are distinguished in terms of handling direct SRP: (1) analytical (Li et al 2018;Bhattarai et al 2022); (2) empirical (Beutler et al 1994;Bar-Sever and Kuang 2004;Arnold et al 2015); and (3) hybrid or semi-empirical approach standing somewhere in between to combine a physical understanding of SRP with empirical adjustment of parameters (Rodriguez-Solano et al 2012a;Montenbruck et al 2015a;Duan et al 2019Duan et al , 2022.…”

Section: Solar Radiation Pressure Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the potential contribution of BeiDou-3 to the realization of the terrestrial reference frame scale

2022

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Since the release of the phase center calibrations for both the receivers and the satellites, the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) became a new potential contributor to the realization of the terrestrial reference frame (TRF) scale of future International Terrestrial Reference Frame releases. This study focuses on the evaluation of the potential usage of the BDS-3 Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) constellation to the definition of the TRF scale. To that aim, we used ground calibrated BDS-3 satellite PCOs provided by the China Satellite Navigation Office and multi-GNSS robot calibrations for the ground antennas conducted by Geo++. Two ionosphere-free linear combinations of signals, namely B1I/B3I and B1C/B2a, have been investigated to find out whether using different frequencies may lead to different TRF scale definitions. Differences between the z components of the satellite phase offsets as given by manufacturer calibrations and those estimated based on IGS14 scale amount to 6.55 ± 12.56 cm and − 0.32 ± 10.99 cm for B1I/B3I and B1C/B2a frequency pairs, respectively. On the one hand, the substantial deviation from the mean reflects the disparities in the quality of calibrations for the individual spacecraft, especially those manufactured by the Shanghai Engineering Center for Microsatellites (SECM). On the other hand, the difference between the two frequency pairs arises to a great extent from the doubtful quality of the SECM PCO calibrations, which certainly do not reflect the frequency dependence of the PCOs. Eventually, the mean scale bias with respect to IGS14 equals + 0.546 ± 0.085 ppb and + 0.026 ± 0.085 ppb for B1I/B3I and B1C/B2a solutions, respectively, when using all 24 BDS-3 MEO satellites.

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Section: Solar Radiation Pressure Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the potential contribution of BeiDou-3 to the realization of the terrestrial reference frame scale

2022

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“…Such an approach has been adopted by the University College London, which developed a tool for radiation pressure modeling based on ray tracing (Bhattarai et al, 2019). It has been extensively used for radiation pressure modeling within the context of precise orbit determination of GNSS satellites (Ziebart, 2004;Li et al, 2020;Bhattarai et al, 2022). Similarly, Darugna et al (2018) used ray tracing to evaluate the radiation pressure for the first satellite of the Japanese Quasi-Zenith Satellite System, QZS-1.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New thermosphere neutral mass density and crosswind datasets from CHAMP, GRACE, and GRACE-FO

Siemes

Borries

Bruinsma

et al. 2023

J. Space Weather Space Clim.

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We present new neutral mass density and crosswind observations for the CHAMP, GRACE, and GRACE-FO missions, filling the last gaps in our database of accelerometer-derived thermosphere observations. For consistency, we processed the data over the entire lifetime of these missions, noting that the results for GRACE in 2011-2017 and GRACE-FO are entirely new. All accelerometer data are newly calibrated. We modeled the temperature-induced bias variations for the GRACE accelerometer data to counter the detrimental effects of the accelerometer thermal control deactivation in April 2011. Further, we developed a new radiation pressure model, which uses ray tracing to account for shadowing and multiple reflections and calculates the satellite's thermal emissions based on the illumination history. The advances in calibration and radiation pressure modeling are essential when the radiation pressure acceleration is significant compared to the aerodynamic one above 450 km altitude during low solar activity, where the GRACE and GRACE-FO satellites spent a considerable fraction of their mission lifetime. The mean of the new density observations changes only marginally, but their standard deviation shows a substantial reduction compared to thermosphere models, up to 15% for GRACE in 2009. The mean and standard deviation of the new GRACE-FO density observations are in good agreement with the GRACE observations. The GRACE and CHAMP crosswind observations agree well with the physics-based TIE-GCM winds, particularly the polar wind patterns. The mean observed crosswind is a few tens of m/s larger than the model one, which we attribute primarily to the crosswind errors being positive by the definition of the retrieval algorithm. The correlation between observed and model crosswind is about 60%, except for GRACE in 2004-2011 when the signal was too small to retrieve crosswinds reliably.

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“…As confirmed in Steigenberger et al (2018), the impact of the antenna thrust on Galileo satellite orbits can be larger than 2 cm in the radial direction for the FOC (Full Operational Capability) satellites. In addition to the officially published metadata, radiator emission power estimated and navigation antenna thermal properties of Galileo satellites are published in Sidorov et al (2020), Bhattarai et al (2022), Dilssner et al (2022) and Duan and Hugentobler (2022). With all this metadata, Galileo satellite orbits can be determined with a precision of better than 2 cm in the radial component.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance of Galileo satellite products determined from multi-frequency measurements

Duan

Hugentobler

Montenbruck

et al. 2023

J Geod

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Each Galileo satellite provides coherent navigation signals in four distinct frequency bands. International GNSS Service (IGS) analysis centers (ACs) typically determine Galileo satellite products based on the E1/E5a dual-frequency measurements due to the software limitation and the limited tracking capability of other signals in the early time. The goal of this contribution is to evaluate the quality of Galileo satellite products determined by using different dual-frequency (E1/E5a, E1/E5b, E1/E5, E1/E6) and multi-frequency (E1/E5a/E5b/E5/E6) measurements based on different sizes of ground networks. The performance of signal noise, the consistency of frequency-specific satellite phase center offsets and the stability of satellite phase biases are assessed in advance to confirm preconditions for multi-frequency processing. Orbit results from different dual-frequency measurements show that orbit precision determined from E1/E6 is clearly worse (about 35%) than that from other dual-frequency solutions. In view of a similar E1, E5a, E5b and E6 measurement quality, the degraded E1/E6 orbit performance is mainly attributed to the unfavorable noise amplification in the respective ionosphere-free linear combination. The advantage of using multi-frequency measurements over dual-frequency for precise orbit determination is clearly visible when using small networks. For instance, the ambiguity fixing rate is 80% for the multi-frequency solution while it is less than 40% for the dual-frequency solution if 150 s data sampling is employed in a 15-station network. Higher fixing rates result in better (more than 30%) satellite orbits and more robust satellite clock and phase bias products. In general, satellite phase bias products determined from a 20-station (or more) network are precise enough to conduct precise point positioning with ambiguity resolution (PPP-AR) applications. Multi-frequency kinematic PPP-AR solutions always show 5–10% precision improvement compared to those computed from dual-frequency observations.

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High-precision physics-based radiation force models for the Galileo spacecraft

Cited by 9 publications

References 25 publications

On the potential contribution of BeiDou-3 to the realization of the terrestrial reference frame scale

On the potential contribution of BeiDou-3 to the realization of the terrestrial reference frame scale

New thermosphere neutral mass density and crosswind datasets from CHAMP, GRACE, and GRACE-FO

Performance of Galileo satellite products determined from multi-frequency measurements

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