Application of Gravity Gradients in the Process of GOCE Orbit Determination

• Autorzy: Bobojć A.

Identyfikatory

DOI

10.1515/acgeo-2016-0004

• Języki publikacji: EN

Abstrakty

EN

The possibility of improving the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) mission satellite orbit using gravity gradient observations was investigated. The orbit improvement is performed by a dedicated software package, called the Orbital Computation System (OCS), which is based on the classical least squares method. The corrections to the initial satellite state vector components are estimated in an iterative process, using dynamic models describing gravitational perturbations. An important component implemented in the OCS package is the 8th order Cowell numerical integration procedure, which directly generates the satellite orbit. Taking into account the real and simulated GOCE gravity gradients, different variants of the solution of the orbit improvement process were obtained. The improved orbits were compared to the GOCE reference orbits (Precise Science Orbits for the GOCE satellite provided by the European Space Agency) using the root mean squares (RMS) of the differences between the satellite positions in these orbits. The comparison between the improved orbits and the reference orbits was performed with respect to the inertial reference frame (IRF) at J2000.0 epoch. The RMS values for the solutions based on the real gravity gradient measurements are at a level of hundreds of kilometers and more. This means that orbit improvement using the real gravity gradients is ineffective. However, all solutions using simulated gravity gradients have RMS values below the threshold determined by the RMS 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.

Słowa kluczowe

EN

GOCE satellite orbit; gravity gradients

PL

orbita satelitarna GOCE; gradienty grawitacyjne

• Wydawca: Instytut Geofizyki PAN ; Springer
• Czasopismo: Acta Geophysica
• Rocznik: 2016
• Tom: Vol. 64, no. 2
• Strony: 521--540
• Opis fizyczny: Bibliogr. 21 poz.

Twórcy

autor

Bobojć A.

• University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Department of Astronomy and Geodynamics, Olsztyn, Poland

Bibliografia

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Uwagi

PL

Opracowanie ze środków MNiSW w ramach umowy 812/P-DUN/2016 na działalność upowszechniającą naukę