CoAuthors

John Moyard (CNES, France); Flavien Mercier (CNES, France); Sabine Houry (CNES, France); Timothée Braz (CS-SI, France); Vincent Debout (CS-SI, France); Georgia Katsigianni (CLS, France); Eléonore Saquet (CLS, France)

2022 is a successful time for altimetry, with nine currently flying satellites: CryoSat-2 (2010), Saral/AltiKa (2013), Jason-3 (2016), Sentinel-3A (2016), Sentinel-3B (2018), HY-2B (2018), HY-2C (2020), Sentinel-6 MF (2020), HY-2D (2021), all of them being processed with the same CNES POE-F precise orbit standards. This impressive Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation is also planned to be complemented by a tenth altimeter mission, the SWOT next-generation satellite in November 2022.
This paper focuses on the two reference missions, Jason-3 & Sentinel-6 MF. and their precise orbit consistency during their tandem phase. To this end, a comparison of the performances of the two orbits will be presented during this important period of validation, with Sentinel-6 MF flying 30 seconds behind its predecessor and following the same ground track. In particular, the operational Sentinel-6 MF CNES POE-F orbit solutions were recently reprocessed following this commissioning period. These new orbits now consider the first Galileo measurements available for an altimeter mission, an improved modeling of the Solar Radiation Pressure (SRP) perturbations, updates on the center of phase positions of the POD instruments, as well as on the parameterization to better account for the residual measurement and dynamic modeling errors.