Abstract Spire Global, Inc. operates a growing fleet of currently more than 100 CubeSats in different low Earth orbits for commercial Earth observation. These satellites are equipped with dual-frequency GPS receivers and an attitude determination and control system, allowing for precise orbit determination. For three different satellites and a time span of six months we analyze the performance and quality of the on-board collected GPS and attitude data and employ it for precise orbit determination using the Bernese GNSS Software and Napeos, two independent state-of-the-art GNSS processing software packages. We describe technical details crucial for POD and present and compare the in-flight calibrated phase center variation maps. Reduced-dynamic and kinematic orbits are then inter-compared between the two software packages as well as to the orbit solutions produced by Spire Global. We report pseudo-range and carrier phase residuals at the level of 3–4 m and 8–9 mm RMS and a good agreement between the reduced-dynamic and kinematic orbits of around 5 cm 3D RMS. The reduced-dynamic orbit positions and velocities produced with the two employed software packages agree in average on the level of 6–7 cm and 0.05–0.07 mm/s 3D RMS, while the comparison to the orbits produced by Spire Global is markedly worse with 27–30 cm and 0.32–0.36 mm/s 3D RMS. The presented results are an encouraging first step towards using GPS data from the Spire constellation for geodetic, geophysical and ionospheric applications.


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    Titel :

    Precise orbit determination of Spire nano satellites


    Beteiligte:
    Arnold, Daniel (Autor:in) / Peter, Heike (Autor:in) / Mao, Xinyuan (Autor:in) / Miller, Alexandra (Autor:in) / Jäggi, Adrian (Autor:in)

    Erschienen in:

    Advances in Space Research ; 72 , 11 ; 5030-5046


    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2023-10-08


    Format / Umfang :

    17 pages




    Medientyp :

    Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)


    Format :

    Elektronische Ressource


    Sprache :

    Englisch




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