IMPROVED GPS SOLAR-RADIATION PRESSURE MODELING FOR PRECISE ORBIT DETERMINATION

Data collected from a worldwide 1992 experiment have been processed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to determine precise orbits for the sat ellites of the Global Positioning System (GPS). The goal of this study was to improve satellite force modeling in order to achieve centimete r-level accuracy for global geocentric coordinates. A filtering techni que has been tested to improve modeling of solar radiation pressure pa rameters for GPS satellites. The new approach improves orbit quality f or eclipsing GPS satellites by a factor of 2, with typical results in the range of 25-50 cm.