VLBI processing in FocusPOD

GMV is developing FocusPOD, a suite of tools for POD and geodesy, powered by GMV MAORI, a new GMV in-house Flight Dynamics & Geodesy library, written from scratch in modern C++ and python. FocusPOD supports several projects led by GMV, including the operational provision of Precise Orbit Determination (POD) products of the Copernicus Sentinel satellites in the frame of the CPOD Service, the simulation of tracking data for Galileo 2^nd Generation (G2G) System Test Bed, and other space debris and flight dynamics activities.

FocusPOD is currently capable of processing GNSS data, with a focus on on-board receivers to support POD, and Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR), mostly used in CPOD as an external orbit validation source. Capabilities to process DORIS have been recently added, also targeting POD applications as a first step. GMV’s roadmap for FocusPOD include processing VLBI in addition to these 3 techniques, with the target of becoming a reference software for the geodesy community.

This contribution intends to present FocusPOD roadmap to incorporate VLBI processing capabilities, describing the modelling challenges that have been identified and the various steps that will be taken to finally be able to process VLBI and provide VLBI-based ITRF products. As part of this roadmap, other parallel activities to tie together the rest of the techniques will also be undertaken and described, mostly related to the ground-based processing of GNSS, SLR and DORIS data.