Abstract: | DORIS is a tracking system developed by CNES to support precise orbit computation of the US-French TOPEX/POSEIDON project. Moreover DORIS data are currently processed to compute SPOT2 and SPOT3 orbits. Although the SPOT satellites are at 800 km altitudes, their orbits reach the decimetric level, to be compared to the 3–4 cm RMS on the T/P radial component.For each type of orbit, there is an adaptive period of a few months which is used for improving the precision. The paper describes what has been done to reduce some items in the total error budget. The latest results will be presented as well as the criteria which are settled to characterize the improvements.Finally, the future developments of DORIS and the potential projects flowing DORIS will be outlined such as ENVISAT and TOPEX/POSEIDON Follow On. |