Towards the 1 mm/y Stability of the Radial Orbit Error at Regional Scales

Alexandre
Couhert
CNES
Luca Cerri, CNES
Flavien Mercier, CNES
Sabine Houry, CNES
Oral
The focus of this presentation will be on the long-term stability of the orbit time series, for mean sea level applications, on a regional scale.
We discuss various issues related to the assessment of radial orbit error trends; in particular the impact of method on the inference of Geographically Correlated Errors is examined as well as the significance of trends vs. the time-span of the analysis. Thus a long-term error budget of the 10-year Jason-1 and ENVISAT GDR-D orbit time series is provided at two time scales: interannual, decadal.
The variations of the geopotential being still one of the primary limitations in the POD, the overall accuracy of the Jason-1 and Jason-2 GDR-D solutions is evaluated through comparisons with external orbits, using different time-variable gravity modeling options.
We will also review orbit errors depending on the tracking technique, aiming at monitoring the long-term stability of all available measurement systems operating on Jason-1 and Jason-2.
OSTS session
Precision Orbit Determination