Sensing the Atmosphere From a Low-Earth Orbiter Tracking GPS: Early Results and Lessons From the GPS/MET Experiment

George Hajj, E. Rob Kursinski, Willy Bertiger, Stephen Leroy, Larry Romans, and J. Tim Schofield

Abstract:	The radio occultation technique, which has been repeatedly proven for planetary atmospheres, was first utilized to observe Earths atmosphere by the GPS-MET experiment (launched in April 1995), in which a high performance GPS receiver was placed into a low-Earth orbit. During certain phases of the mission, more than 100 occultations per day am acquired. A subset of this occultation data is analyzed and temperature in the neutral atmosphere and electron profiles in the ionosphere are obtained. Comparing about 100 GPS-MET retrievals to accurate meteorological analyses obtained from the European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasting at heights between 5-30 km, temperature differences display biases of less than 0.5K and standard deviations of l-2K in the northern hemisphere, where the model is expected to be most accurate. Furthermore, electron density profiles obtained for different geodetic locations and times show the main features that are expected in the ionosphere.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 8th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1995) September 12 - 15, 1995 Palm Springs, CA
Pages:	1167 - 1174
Cite this article:	Hajj, George, Kursinski, E. Rob, Bertiger, Willy, Leroy, Stephen, Romans, Larry, Schofield, J. Tim, "Sensing the Atmosphere From a Low-Earth Orbiter Tracking GPS: Early Results and Lessons From the GPS/MET Experiment," Proceedings of the 8th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1995), Palm Springs, CA, September 1995, pp. 1167-1174.
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