Dynamic and non-dynamic ERS-1 radial orbit improvement from ERS-1/TOPEX dual-satellite altimetry

Dual-satellite altimeter crossover differences between ERS-1 and TOPEX/Poseidon have been included as supplementary tracking data in ERS-1 orbit computations from SLR and single-satellite crossover differences. It was found that including the dual-satellite crossover differences slightly improves the ERS-1 radial orbit accuracy of about 12 cm for orbits computed with the JGM-2 gravity field and also leads to a better ‘centering’ of the ERS-1 orbit in the terrestrial reference frame defined for TOPEX/Poseidon. In addition to this dynamic orbit improvement technique, a non-dynamic technique has been investigated that removes the larger part of the ERS-1 radial orbit error from the dual-satellite crossover difference residuals. For ERS-1 orbits computed with the GEM-T2 gravity field, it was found that the non-dynamic technique could improve the radial orbit accuracy from 140 cm to the same level of accuracy as the ERS-1 JGM-2 orbits.