Elsevier

Measurement

Volume 182, September 2021, 109786
Measurement

Detector-specific issues in Satellite Laser Ranging to Swarm-A/B/C satellites

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.measurement.2021.109786Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Highlights

  • SLR observations to Swarm allow revealing station biases and signature effects.

  • MCP and PMT detectors show a dependency of SLR data and the satellite nadir angles.

  • CSPAD is the most reliable detector for SLR measurements with smallest biases.

  • SLR observations to Swarms allow for determination of SLR station coordinates.

  • SLR-PPP provides coordinates of a similar quality to the network constraints.

Abstract

Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) to Low Earth Orbiters (LEOs) is traditionally used to validate orbits derived by microwave techniques, e.g., Global Positioning System (GPS). For most LEOs, SLR is the only possibility to independently assess the GPS orbit quality, to calibrate onboard instruments, and to reveal otherwise unnoticed systematic errors. However, the detector-specific errors in SLR measurements may corrupt the SLR observations and derived parameters. We found that the stations employing Compensated Single-Photon Avalanche Diode (CSPAD) detectors are characterized by the lowest, 15 and 21 mm root-mean-square residuals for reduced-dynamic and kinematic orbits, respectively, and show almost no dependency on the satellite nadir angle nor the observation acquisition time, as opposed to stations with Multi-Channel Plates (MCP) and Photomultiplier Tube (PMT) detectors. SLR observations to Swarm-A/B/C can also be used for the determination of SLR station coordinates characterized by 27, 15, 18 mm interquartile range repeatability for the Up, North, and East components, respectively.

Keywords

Satellite Laser Ranging
Satellite signature effect
Precise orbit determination
Swarm satellites
SLR detectors

Availability of data and materials

The SLR observations used for this study can be freely downloaded from the Crustal Dynamics Data Information System [1] servers, i.e., ftp://cddis.nasa.gov/slr/products. The other datasets generated during and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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