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APOD mission status and preliminary results

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Abstract

On September 20th, 2015, twenty satellites were successfully deployed into a near-polar circular orbit at 520 km altitude by the Chinese CZ-6 test rocket, which was launched from the TaiYuan Satellite Launch Center. Among these satellites, a set of 4 CubeSats conform the atmospheric density detection and precise orbit determination (APOD) mission, which is projected for atmospheric density estimation from in-situ detection and precise orbit products. The APOD satellites are manufactured by China Spacesat Co. Ltd. and the payload instruments include an atmospheric density detector (ADD), a dual-frequency dual-mode global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver (GPS and Beidou), a satellite laser ranging (SLR) reflector, and an S/X-band very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) beacon. In this paper, we compare the GNSS precise orbit products with co-located SLR observations, and the 3D orbit accuracy shows better than 10 cm RMS. These results reveal the great potential of the onboard micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) GNSS receiver. After calibrating ADD density estimates with precise orbit products, the accuracy of our density products can reach about 10% with respect to the background density. Density estimates from APOD are of a great importance for scientific studies on upper atmosphere variations and useful for model data assimilation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the ILRS for SLR data of the APOD mission. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41874183, 41474131 & 41604131).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology (NUIST), Nanjing, 210044, China

    Geshi Tang & Andres Calabia

  2. Aerospace Flight Dynamics Laboratory (AFDL), Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC), Beijing, 100094, China

    Geshi Tang, Xie Li, Jianfeng Cao, Shushi Liu, Guangming Chen & Haijun Man

  3. China Spacesat Co. Ltd., Beijing, 100094, China

    Xiaomin Zhang, Sihan Shi & Ji Sun

  4. National Space Science Center (NSSC), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Yongping Li

Authors
  1. Geshi Tang
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  2. Xie Li
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  3. Jianfeng Cao
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  4. Shushi Liu
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  5. Guangming Chen
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  6. Haijun Man
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  7. Xiaomin Zhang
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  9. Ji Sun
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  10. Yongping Li
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  11. Andres Calabia
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Correspondence to Geshi Tang.

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Tang, G., Li, X., Cao, J. et al. APOD mission status and preliminary results. Sci. China Earth Sci. 63, 257–266 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-018-9362-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-018-9362-6

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