Abstract
The Sentinel-6 mission aims to provide high-precision ocean altimetry measurements. Altimeter processing relies on highly accurate knowledge of satellite position and attitude. For precise orbit determination (POD), the Sentinel-6A spacecraft is equipped with a dual-constellation global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver and dual GNSS POD antennas. The satellite attitude is indispensable for connecting the satellite body reference frame and the inertial system. The actual satellite attitude is determined from the dual-antenna-based orbit differences and the antenna baseline information. We developed a yaw-attitude model for Sentinel-6A based on 75 days of data in 2021. Single-receiver ambiguity resolution is carried out to further explore the orbit determination accuracy. Different orbits, including the global positioning system (GPS)-only, Galileo-only, GPS/Galileo-combined orbits related to the GNSS POD antenna and orbit based on the data collected by the GNSS radio occultation (GNSS-RO) POD antenna (GNSS-RO orbit), are generated and their consistency is analyzed to investigate the impact of the attitude model and ambiguity resolution on POD. With the established model, the consistency between orbits determined using dual-antenna observations is improved by 41, 70 and 53% in along-track, cross-track and radial directions with respect to the nominal attitude. Compared with the GPS/Galileo-combined solution, the 3D RMS errors of the GPS-only and Galileo-only solutions are better than 4 and 3 mm, and a 12.6 mm RMS is obtained for the GNSS-RO orbit. The STD of satellite laser ranging (SLR) residuals for GPS/Galileo-combined solutions is improved from 14 mm with nominal attitude to 9 mm with the established attitude model. A 10 mm consistency of GNSS-RO, GPS-only and Galileo-only orbits with SLR observations is also achieved.
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Data availability
The Sentinel-6A GNSS observations were obtained from https://earthdata.nasa.gov. The CODE’s GNSS orbit, clock and observation-specific bias (OSB) products are available at ftp://aiub.unibe.ch/CODE_MGEX/CODE/. Sentinel-6A SLR data can be found at ftp://edc.dgfi.tum.de/pub/slr/data. The Sentinel-6A orbits and phase center variation corrections generated during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the European Space Agency (ESA) for the provision of Sentinel-6A onboard data. The authors acknowledge the International GNSS service (IGS) Multi-GNSS Experiment (MGEX) and the Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE) for providing the GNSS products. The authors are also grateful to the EUROLAS Data Center (EDC) for providing the SLR data. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant numbers 41974041, 42074032, 41931075 and 42030109).
Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China, 41974041, Biao Jin, 42074032, Min Li, 41931075, Min Li, 42030109, Min Li.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by BJ, SC, ML and FY. The first draft of the manuscript was written by BJ and LZ. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Jin, B., Chen, S., Li, M. et al. Sentinel-6A attitude modeling with dual GNSS antennas and its impact on precise orbit determination. GPS Solut 27, 7 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-022-01346-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-022-01346-9