Earth and Planetary Science

Impact of Earth Radiation Pressure Physical Analytical Model on Satellite Laser Ranging Orbit Determination

Hao Yang

1. Astro-Geodynamics Research Center, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Shanghai, 200030, China
2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

Xiaoya Wang

1. Astro-Geodynamics Research Center, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Shanghai, 200030, China
2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China
3. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Space Navigation and Positioning Techniques, Shanghai, 200030, China

Yabo Li

Astro-Geodynamics Research Center, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200030, China

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36956/eps.v3i1.967

Received: 24 October 2023; Received in revised form: 27 December 2023; Accepted: 15 January 2024; Published: 28 January 2024

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Abstract

SLR (Satellite Laser Ranging) is a kind of important space geodesy technique for the establishment of a Terrestrial Reference Frame (TRF) and determination of EOP (Earth Orientation Parameters). It determines the origin and scale factor of TRF. The accuracy of future TRF is 1 mm. This requires improving the SLR data processing accuracy and importing higher accuracy SLR satellite data. The Earth Radiation Pressure (ERP) is an important perturbation force for SLR satellites. The traditional Earth radiation pressure model for SLR satellites is the simple Cannon Ball model. This paper establishes the Box-Wing physical Earth radiation pressure model for SLR satellites and takes Lageos-1 as an example to evaluate the physical analytical model. The Lageos-1 is divided into two blocks: metal shell and corner reflectors. The area and optical characteristics of each block are analyzed according to the requirements of three kinds of Earth albedo and emissivity models of point source, experience and grid models. The results show that after importing the physical analytical Earth radiation pressure model, the empirical force acceleration in the T direction is significantly reduced and the orbit overlap arc precision is about 3 mm smaller than that of the original model. The orbit prediction results show that the prediction accuracy of the new Earth radiation pressure model has generally improved significantly. The maximum improvement percentage of the physical analytical model is 12%, 16%, 28% and 25% respectively in the prediction arc length of 1 day, 3 days, 5 days and 7 days. The physical grid model performs the best with the increase of prediction arc length.

Keywords: Satellite laser ranging; Earth radiation pressure; Precision orbit determination; Physical analytical model

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