CoAuthors

Willy Bertiger (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, United States); Bruce Haines (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, United States); Da Kuang (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, United States); Aurore Sibois (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, United States)

We present updated results of the in-flight tracking performance of the Jason-2 and Jason-3 GPS receivers, with particular consideration of the Jason-2 receiver before and after the early-2019 long-duration safehold event. As part of that performance evaluation we also present results from our most recent GPS-only precise orbit determination solutions for Jason-2 and Jason-3. We consider the usual suite of internal (post-fit residuals, day-to-day consistency as measured by overlaps of daily solutions) and external (sea surface height crossover variance, and withheld satellite laser ranging residuals) metrics, as well as comparisons to independent precise orbit determination solutions from GSFC and CNES. In this presentation we also provide results from studies that we have performed on the sensitivity and impact of various strategies for handling geocenter motion. We considered three approaches: 1) ignoring geocenter motion and using JPL’s standard IGS14-based orbit and clock products; 2) use of so-called no-net-rotation orbit and clock products for the GPS constellation; 3) using models to account for geocenter motion while generating orbit and clock products for the GPS constellation.