Effects of Full Order Geopotential Hessian on Precision Orbit Determination of Geodetic Satellites

What is it about?

This paper examines the effects of using the full order geopotential terms to calculate the state transition matrix for precision orbit determination.

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Why is it important?

This work found that including the higher order gravity terms not only decreases the number of iterations needed for convergence, but also can yield an orbit solution with decreased RMS error residuals. By using this methodology, one can improve orbit determination performance and solutions.