Shailen Desai (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA); Bruce Haines (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA)

This presentation focuses on results from the radiometric evaluation of the TriG Precise Orbit Determination (POD) Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver onboard the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich (MF) spacecraft. For the GPS-based POD, we investigate a variety of approaches for the solar radiation pressure force models. We assess various tracking metrics, data noise, and POD performance in terms of orbit overlap differences. We also present results from the evaluation of our GPS-based POD solutions using independent metrics such as withheld satellite laser ranging data residuals and sea surface height residuals at locations where ascending and descending passes cross (i.e., crossover residuals). Finally, we assess relative performance of our GPS-based Sentinel-6 MF orbit solutions to the precise orbit ephemeris (POE) that is provided on the science data products.