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Point positioning the geocenter through LEO GPS tracking and its application in geophysics

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Abstract

We distinguish between geocenter location and geocenter motion for their different purposes: precise orbit determination (POD) and earth surface mass variation monitoring. We present a method to measure the geocenter location through GPS tracked low earth orbiters (LEO) POD. We propose two methods to apply these geocenter location estimates to earth surface mass variation study. 19 years of daily geocenter locations in IGS14 reference frame are estimated from the POD of GPS tracked LEOs. These estimates are applied to 296 globally distributed GPS ground stations measured in the same reference frame for surface mass variation inversion. The results show that such determined geocenter location reaches sub-millimeter precision in each component judged by RMS of the overlap** differences. The geocenter motion change measured using the 80-station GPS orbit and clock product shows similar annual variation to the degree-1 term of the surface mass variation spherical harmonics determined from the 296-station inversion.

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Data availability

LEO GPS tracking data used for this study are from GRACE and GRACE-FO missions https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset, SWARM mission http://earth.esa.int/eogateway/missions/swarm/data, Sentinel-3 missions https://scihub.copernicus.eu/gnss/#/home, Jason-2 and -3 missions https://www.avl.class.noaa.gov/saa/products. The JPL GPS orbit and clock product are from https://sideshow.jpl.nasa.gov/pub/JPL_GPS_Products. The 60-day SLR solutions are from The University of Texas at Austin Center for Space Research (https://filedrop.csr.utexas.edu/pub/slr/geocenter/60_day_geocenter_constrained_heights_detrended.txt). The “OBP + GRACE” geocenter motion solution is from JPL’s GRACE Technical Note #13c (https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/gravity/grace-documentation#TechnicalNotes). The “Inverse” solution of Wu et al. 2020 is provided by the author and available upon request. The three time series of daily geocenter location from GRACE solution, GRACE-FO solution and the 7-LEO solution are available upon request. The 19-year combined monthly geocenter location time series, as well as the inversion solution of the degree-1 geocenter motion are also available upon request.

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Acknowledgements

The work described in this paper is carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). LEO GPS tracking data are from missions by European Space Agency (ESA), U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and NASA. The constructive suggestions from two anonymous reviewers are greatly appreciated.

Funding

Funding was provided by National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Da Kuang, Shailen D. Desai, Bruce J. Haines & ** Wu

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  1. Da Kuang
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  2. Shailen D. Desai
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  3. Bruce J. Haines
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  4. ** Wu
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Contributions

DK formulated the algorithm and processed the data; SD selected the LEO configurations and prepared the data; BH verified the POD strategy and solutions; XW developed and carried out the application. All authors discussed the results together and reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Da Kuang.

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Kuang, D., Desai, S.D., Haines, B.J. et al. Point positioning the geocenter through LEO GPS tracking and its application in geophysics. GPS Solut 28, 137 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-024-01680-0

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