GIOVE-B solar radiation pressure modeling for precise orbit determination

Previous studies have identified systematic errors in the orbit and clock estimates of the GIOVE and Galileo IOV satellites in the order of ±20 cm. These errors are visible as periodic variations in the Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) and clock residuals. For IOV, these variations could be attributed to the contribution of a stretched satellite body and it was shown that a simple a priori box model for the solar radiation pressure can significantly reduce these errors. GIOVE-B has similar dimensions as the IOV satellites but its orientation is different: for GIOVE-B the narrow side of the satellite points to the Earth rather than the longitudinal side. In addition, an extra plate carrying, amongst others, the laser retro reflector array is mounted on the spacecraft introducing shadowing effects. These features are considered with a simple box-plate model. This model reduces the periodic clock errors and the SLR residual RMS of GIOVE-B by a factor of two. Most importantly, the box-plate model reduces the SLR offset from 11 cm to less than 1 cm. The largest part of this reduction comes from considering the plate and its shadowing effects.