CHARACTERIZING THE EFFECTS OF LOW ORDER PERTURBATIONS ON GEODETIC SATELLITE PRECISION ORBIT DETERMINATION

Satellite operations often rely on the ability to precisely determine and accurately predict the satellite's orbit. Thus, there are numerous papers dedicated to developing methodologies for successful orbit determination. However, there are also lower order forces that act upon satellites that are not directly studied in detail. Two such phenomenon are studied here; perturbations due to the Lunar geopotential, and lower order relativistic corrections. The effects of both on orbit determination are studied with US Naval Research Laboratory's Orbit Covariance Estimation and ANalysis (OCEAN) tool. High precision laser ranging data of geodetic satellites are used as test cases to evaluate the solution accuracy and predictive capabilities. Orbit fit quality and prediction comparison metrics are generated for a number of lunar gravity field models, as well as including or excluding several lower order relativistic corrections. Recommendations are made based on the results.