[IGSMAIL-7682] ESA Living Planet Symposium, 13-17 May 2019, Milan, Italy, Session on "Precise Orbit Determination of Earth Observation Satellites - Progress, Validation, and Challenges"

[Heike Peter]

Dear colleagues,

I would like to draw your attention to a session on "Precise Orbit 
Determination of Earth Observation Satellites - Progress, Validation, 
and Challenges" at the ESA Living Planet Symposium 
(https://lps19.esa.int) on 13-17 May 2019 in Milan, Italy.
As the title already assumes the session is on POD of Earth Observation 
Satellites, including all issues and investigations done in the field of 
POD for low Earth orbiting satellites requiring highly precise orbits.
For more details please find the entire session description below.
Please kindly consider to contribute to the session.
Abstract submission deadline is 11 November 2018.

Please spread the information on this session also in your institute and 
to your colleagues.

Kind regards
Heike Peter
PosiTim UG


B.6 Calibration, validation and data quality

B6.01 Precise Orbit Determination of Earth Observation Satellites - 
Progress, Validation, and Challenges
Precise orbit determination (POD) is essential for the applications of 
many Earth Observation Satellites, such as radar altimetry, InSAR, radio 
occultation or gravity field recovery. The Copernicus Sentinel 
satellites, ESA Earth Explorer missions like GOCE, CryoSat, Swarm, and 
other missions like Jason, GRACE/GRACE-FO, or the MetOp satellites could 
be mentioned as part of a long list of Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) 
satellites requiring highly precise orbit products. The main observation 
techniques of GNSS, DORIS, and SLR are available for this purpose and 
they are either used for POD or for independent validation of orbits 
derived from other techniques. The progress in POD over the last years 
is tremendous due to improved gravitational and non-gravitational force 
modelling, reduction of measurement-specific systematic errors but also 
due to common use of efficient GPS carrier phase ambiguity-fixing and 
improved internal and external validation methods. Upcoming multi-GNSS 
observations from the LEOs are a new challenge but also a great 
opportunity for POD. Radar altimetry and InSAR processing are relying on 
precise knowledge of the satellites´ positions but these techniques may 
also be used for validating the quality of the orbit.
Submissions related to but not limited to the following topics are 
encouraged:

- LEO POD in general
- Status, progress and improvements of POD for current and past Earth 
Observation missions
- Challenges and developments for future missions, in particular 
Sentinel-C/-D and -6 mission
- Independent and external validation methods (cross-over analysis, 
InSAR, etc.)
- Combination between different missions
- New ideas, methods, and applications of POD for Geosciences

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Dr. Heike Peter
Senior Consultant
PosiTim UG
Germany
Tel.: +49 2255 9239616
Fax: +49 2255 9239615