ORBIT DETERMINATION AND ANALYSIS OF METEOR-3-01 ROCKET (1985-100B) AT 13TH-ORDER RESONANCE

The orbit of the rocket of Meteor 3-01 (1985-100B) has been determined at 95 epochs between 15 October 1990 and 27 September 1993, during which time the orbit was trapped in 13th-order resonance with the Earth's geopotential. A total of 5865 observations were used in the orbit determination process, most of which were supplied by the U.S. Navy. A large number of British radar observations were also available together with some visual observations. The variations in the orbital inclination, eccentricity and mean motion have been analysed to determine four lumped harmonic coefficients of order 13 and two of order 26. Before this was done all unwanted perturbations were removed from the data. The principal lumped harmonic coefficients determined are accurate to approximately 0.1 mm in geoid height and as such provide the most stringent test available for comprehensive geopotential models at 13th order.