CoAuthors

Jaime Fernández (GMV AD, Spain); Pierre Féménias (ESA/ESRIN, Italy)

The Copernicus POD (Precise Orbit Determination) Service has started to process the Sentinel-3 DORIS observations for orbit determination. The operational Sentinel-3 orbit products are all based on the GPS observations only. The Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) data are already used for validation of the GPS-derived orbits. In order to have the capability of using all three observation techniques within the Copernicus POD Service effort has been taken to include the DORIS processing as well.

The processing is done with NAPEOS (Navigation Package for Earth Orbiting Satellites), which allows to do technique specific or combined GPS, DORIS, SLR orbit determination. In a first step DORIS-only orbit determination is setup to investigate the performance compared to the operational GPS-derived orbits. Different arc lengths and orbit parametrizations are analysed to find the optimal settings for the DORIS processing.

The resulting orbits are validated with SLR data or are compared to GPS-only, DORIS-only or combined orbits provided by the Copernicus POD Quality Working Group. Results are presented for Sentinel-3A and for Sentinel-3B.