Precise Orbit Determination for the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission using a New Generation of GPS Receiver

Willy Bertiger, Yoaz Bar-Sever, Shailen Desai, Courtney Duncan, Bruce Haines, Da Kuang, Michael Lough, Angela Reichert, Larry Romans, Jeff Srinivasan, Frank Webb, Larry Young and James Zumberge

Abstract:	The BlackJack family of GPS receivers has been developed at JPL to satisfy NASA's requirements for high-accuracy, dual-frequency, Y-codeless GPS receivers for NASA's Earth science missions. The first BlackJack flight was on the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) in February of 2000. Data from this mission are being processed to make global maps of the Earth, which will be exploited for scientific and utilitarian purposes. The BlackJack data are used to position the radar antennas with 60-cm (1-sigma) accuracy in each component during In addition to the Shuttle flight results, we will give the details of tests on newer versions of the BlackJack which will yield positioning at the few cm level for CHAMP [launched July 15, 2000; preliminary results show on-orbit accuracy < 10 cm] and SAC-C missions [Scheduled launch date, November, 2000]. These tests include data taken in orbit, on orbital simulators and with a rooftop antenna. In the rooftop tests, the signal from the antenna is split and simultaneously sampled by a commercial geodetic quality receiver. This test setup allows for comparison to a known standard. the radar data acquisition. In this paper, we will present the challenges that were overcome to meet this accuracy requirement. These include various bugs in the early version of the receiver software and frequent thruster firings on the Shuttle which degraded the utility of dynamic orbit modeling. We will discuss the various reduced dynamic tracking strategies, Space Shuttle dynamic models, and our tests for accuracy that included a military Y-code dual-frequency receiver (MAGR).
Published in:	Proceedings of the 13th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2000) September 19 - 22, 2000 Salt Palace Convention Center Salt Lake City, UT
Pages:	1646 - 1654
Cite this article:	Bertiger, Willy, Bar-Sever, Yoaz, Desai, Shailen, Duncan, Courtney, Haines, Bruce, Kuang, Da, Lough, Michael, Reichert, Angela, Romans, Larry, Srinivasan, Jeff, Webb, Frank, Young, Larry, Zumberge, James, "Precise Orbit Determination for the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission using a New Generation of GPS Receiver," Proceedings of the 13th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2000), Salt Lake City, UT, September 2000, pp. 1646-1654.
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