Orbit parameterization aspects in global solutions of spherical Laser Ranging Satellites

Laser ranging to spherical satellites is a major source for the determination of geophysical and geometric parameters like the scale of the reference system and the lowest degree (1-2) gravity field coefficients, i.e. geocenter motion, dynamic oblateness and the orientation of the rotation axis of the Earth. The International Laser Ranging Service (ILRS) is collecting Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) observations of a global station network, providing the range data as normal points to its analysis centers, which perform precise orbit determination (POD) and network solutions based on 7 day orbital arcs. Currently, efforts are undertaken to extend the classical ILRS processing of the LAGEOS and ETALON satellites by LARES 2, as well as lower-flying satellites, i.e. LARES, Stella and Starlette, necessitating an adaption of the SLR-POD model and parametrization due to the increased sensitivity to orbit perturbations at low orbit altitudes.

We present the status of the SLR-POD at AIUB, where in support of the ILRS analysis center at BKG the incorporation of the low-flying SLR satellites into the 7 day POD and network solution of LAGEOS/ETALON/LARES-2 is beeing tested, making use of long-arc stacking techniques of daily arcs to continuous 7 day arcs. All orbit and geophysical parametes are estimated in one common estimation process to avoid implicit regularization by apriori information. Special attention is paid to the co-estimation of the low-degree gravity field coefficients and the correlations with the empirical dynamic parameters deployed in the classical LAGEOS/ETALON POD model.