Precise orbit determination for GRACE with zero-difference kinematic method

Thanks to the high performance of the spaceborne GPS receiver and the availability of precise IGS orbit and clock products, zero-difference kinematic precise orbit determination (POD) has been turned out to be a new effective method in orbit determination for the LEO satellites. Zero-difference kinematic POD, which is based on the GPS measurements only from the spaceborne GPS receiver, does not depend on the force models and orbit design. From this point of view, kinematic POD is suitable for the Earth observation satellites at very low altitudes, such as CHAMP, GRACE and GOCE, etc. This paper first reviews the basic zero-difference GPS observation model. Then a modified data quality control scheme is put forward. Finally, a block-wise least squares algorithm, which first separates the parameters into several groups and then solves the parameters by elimination and back-substitution, is discussed and proposed for the kinematic orbit determination. With the above algorithms, we developed kinematic POD software to solve the orbit suitable for one-week GRACE observations. Comparisons with the published Rapid Science Orbit (RSO) indicate that, using our approach to determine the orbit, the accuracy in the radial direction can achieve 3-4 cm for GRACE-A, and 3-5 cm for GRACE-B.