The International DORIS Service (IDS): Toward maturity

DORIS is one of the four space-geodetic techniques participating in the Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS), particularly to maintain and disseminate the Terrestrial Reference Frame as determined by International Earth rotation and Reference frame Service (IERS). A few years ago, under the umbrella of the International Association of Geodesy, a DORIS International Service (IDS) was created in order to foster international cooperation and to provide new scientific products. This paper addresses the organizational aspects of the IDS and presents some recent DORIS scientific results. It is for the first time that, in preparation of the ITRF2008, seven Analysis Centers (AC’s) contributed to derive long-term time series of DORIS stations positions. These solutions were then combined into a homogeneous time series IDS-2 for which a precision of less than 10 mm was obtained. Orbit comparisons between the various AC’s showed an excellent agreement in the radial component, both for the SPOT satellites (e.g. 0.5–2.1 cm RMS for SPOT-2) and Envisat (0.9–2.1 cm RMS), using different software packages, models, corrections and analysis strategies. There is now a wide international participation within IDS that should lead to future improvements in DORIS analysis strategies and DORIS-derived geodetic products.     

DORIS processing at the European Space Operations Centre

This paper gives an overview of the DORIS related activities at the Navigation Support Office of the European Space Operations Centre. The DORIS activities were started in 2002 because of the launch of the Envisat satellite where ESOC is responsible for the validation of the Envisat Precise Orbits and a brief overview of the key Envisat activities at ESOC is given. Typical orbit comparison RMS values between the CNES POE (GDR-C) and the ESOC POD solution is 6.5, 18.8 and 23.1 mm in radial-, along- and cross-track direction. In the framework of the generation of the ITRF2008 ESOC participated in the reprocessing of all three space geodetic techniques; DORIS, SLR, and GPS. Here the main results of our DORIS reprocessing, in the framework of the International DORIS Service (IDS), are given. The WRMS of the weekly ESOC solution (esawd03) for the 2004–2009 period compared to the IDS-1 combined solution is of the order of 12 mm. Based on the long time series of homogeneously processed data a closer look is taken at the estimated solar radiation pressure parameters of the different satellites used in this DORIS analysis. The main aim being the stabilization of the Z-component of the geocentre estimates. We conclude that the ESOC participation to the IDS ITRF2008 contribution has been beneficial for both ESOC and the IDS. ESOC has profited significantly from the very open and direct communications and comparisons that took place within the IDS during the reprocessing campaign.     

Sounding rocket experiment of bare electrodynamic tether system

An overview of a sounding rocket, S-520-25th, project on space tether technology experiment is presented. The project is prepared by an international research group consisting of Japanese, European, American, and Australian researchers. The sounding rocket will be assembled by the ISAS/JAXA and will be launched in the summer of 2009. The sounding rocket mission includes two engineering experiments and two scientific experiments. These experiments consist of the deployment of bare electrodynamic tape tether in space, a quick ignition test of hollow cathode system in space, the demonstration of bare electrodynamic tether system in space, and the test of the OML (orbital-motion-limit) current collection theory.     

Extended PGA for range migration algorithms

The phase gradient autofocus (PGA) algorithm is extended to work for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) spotlight images processed with range migration (w-k) algorithms. Several pre-processing steps are proposed for aligning the range-compressed phase-history data needed for successful autofocusing of the data. The proposed algorithm gave good results for both data with large point targets and data without point targets.     

Qualification and in-flight demonstration of a European tether deployment system on YES2

This paper highlights the design, qualification and mission performance of the tether deployer system on the second Young Engineers’ Satellite (YES2), that featured a tethered momentum transfer. The deployer is designed with a broad range of near-term tether applications in mind. The system contains the tether, including features to enhance safety and wound up in controlled manner onto a spool core, optical deployment sensors, a “barberpole” friction brake controlled by a stepper motor and a triple tether cutter system. To initiate the deployment a spring-based ejection system was developed, and to apply accurate momentum transfer a timer and release system is present on the subsatellite side. A small, 6 kg re-entry capsule was developed as subsatellite. On September 25th, 2007, YES2 deployed a 32 km tether in orbit and gathered a wealth of data. Confidence is gained from the mission results for use of the deployer in future missions.     

New improved orbit solutions for the ERS-1 and ERS-2 satellites

Improved orbit solutions of the European Remote Sensing Satellites ERS-1 and ERS-2 have been computed in the ITRF2005 terrestrial reference frame using the recent models based mainly on IERS Conventions 2003. These solutions cover the periods 3 August 1991 to 8 July 1996 for ERS-1, and 3 May 1995 to 4 July 2003 for ERS-2. For each satellite, the final orbit solution is based on a combination of three separate orbit solutions independently computed at the Delft Institute of Earth Observation and Space Systems (DEOS) of the Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands), the Navigation Support Office of the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC, Germany) and the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences (Germany) using three different software packages for precise orbit determination, but using the same models in the same terrestrial reference frame within the European Space Agency (ESA) project ‘Reprocessing of Altimeter Products for ERS (REAPER)’. Validation using radar altimeter data indicates that the new combined orbits of ERS-1 and ERS-2 computed by us are significantly more accurate, approaching the 2–3 cm level in radial direction, than previously available orbit solutions.     

Recent advancements in the EST project

The European Solar Telescope (EST) is a project of a new-generation solar telescope. It has a large aperture of 4?m, which is necessary for achieving high spatial and temporal resolution. The high polarimetric sensitivity of the EST will allow to measure the magnetic field in the solar atmosphere with unprecedented precision. Here, we summarise the recent advancements in the realisation of the EST project regarding the hardware development and the refinement of the science requirements.     

Generating precise and homogeneous orbits for Jason-1 and Jason-2

Driven by the GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) and GGOS (Global Geodetic Observing System) initiatives the user community has a strong demand for high-quality altimetry products. In order to derive such high-quality altimetry products, precise orbits for the altimetry satellites are a necessity. With the launch of the TOPEX/Poseidon mission in 1992 a still on-going time series of high-accuracy altimetry measurements of ocean topography started, continued by the altimetry missions Jason-1 in 2001 and Jason-2/OSTM in 2008. This paper contributes to the on-going orbit reprocessing carried out by several groups and presents the efforts of the Navigation Support Office at ESA/ESOC using its NAPEOS software for the generation of precise and homogeneous orbits referring to the same reference frame for the altimetry satellites Jason-1 and Jason-2. Data of all three tracking instruments on-board the satellites (beside the altimeter), i.e. GPS, DORIS, and SLR measurements, were used in a combined data analysis. About 7 years of Jason-1 data and more than 1 year of Jason-2 data were processed. Our processing strategy is close to the GDR-C standards. However, we estimated slightly different scaling factors for the solar radiation pressure model of 0.96 and 0.98 for Jason-1 and Jason-2, respectively. We used 30 s sampled GPS data and introduced 30 s satellite clocks stemming from ESOC’s reprocessing of the combined GPS/GLONASS IGS solution. We present the orbit determination results, focusing on the benefits of adding GPS data to the solution. The fully combined solution was found to give the best orbit results. We reach a post-fit RMS of the GPS phase observation residuals of 6 mm for Jason-1 and 7 mm for Jason-2. The DORIS post-fit residuals clearly benefit from using GPS data in addition, as the DORIS data editing improves. The DORIS observation RMS for the fully combined solution is with 3.5 mm and 3.4 mm, respectively, 0.3 mm better than for the DORIS-SLR solution. Our orbit solution agrees well with external solutions from other analysis centers, as CNES, LCA, and JPL. The orbit differences between our fully combined orbits and the CNES GDR-C orbits are of about 0.8 cm for Jason-1 and at 0.9 cm for Jason-2 in the radial direction. In the cross-track component we observe a clear improvement when adding GPS data to the POD process. The 3D-RMS of the orbit differences reveals a good orbit consistency at 2.7 cm and 2.9 cm for Jason-1 and Jason-2. Our resulting orbit series for both Jason satellites refer to the ITRF2005 reference frame and are provided in sp3 file format on our ftp server.     

YES2 optimal trajectories in presence of eccentricity and aerodynamic drag

YES2 (launching 2007) aims to demonstrate a tether-assisted re-entry concept, whereby payload will be returned to Earth using momentum provided from a swinging tether. Deployment takes place in two phases: (1) deployment of 3.5 km of tether to the local vertical and hold, and (2) deployment to 30 km for a swinging cut. Optimal trajectories are determined for both phases after comparing the effect of different cost functions on the deployment dynamics. Closed-loop control is provided by linearizing the dynamics around the optimal trajectories and solving a receding horizon control problem for a set of linear feedback gains. The controllers are tested in a flexible tether model with large disturbances to the hardware model and environmental variables. Closed-loop simulations show that the system can be controlled quite well using only feedback of length and length rate.