CoAuthors

Shailen D. Desai (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, United States); Bruce J. Haines (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, United States)

We present the latest results from our evaluation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking data from the Sentinel-3 mission satellites, Sentinel-3A (S3A) and Sentinel-3B (S3B). For each spacecraft, we report tracking data statistics (e.g. typical GPS track duration, number of GPS satellites tracked) and discuss the in-flight calibration of the GPS antenna. The in-flight tracking performance of the S3A and S3B receivers is assessed through various internal (e.g. post-fit residuals, radial orbit precision as measured by overlaps of neighboring daily solutions) and external (e.g. sea surface height crossover variance and withheld satellite laser ranging residuals) metrics computed from our precise GPS-based orbit solutions. We also compare the performance of the GPS receivers on-board S3A and S3B with those of the higher-altitude Jason-2 (JA2) and Jason-3 (JA3) altimetry missions. S3A and S3B carry receivers manufactured by RUAG while JA2 and JA3 carry BlackJack and IGOR+ (BlackJack heritage) GPS receivers, respectively.