Prospects of GENESIS and Galileo joint orbit and clock determination

Abstract

The European Space Agency (ESA) is preparing a satellite mission called GENESIS to be launched in 2027 as part of the FutureNAV program. GENESIS co-locates, for the first time, all four space geodetic techniques on one satellite platform. The main objectives of the mission are the realization of the International Terrestrial Reference Frames and the mitigation of biases in geodetic measurements; however, GENESIS will remarkably contribute to the determination of the geodetic parameters. The precise GENESIS orbits will be determined through satellite-to-satellite tracking, employing two GNSS antennas to observe GPS and Galileo satellites in both nadir and zenith directions. In this research, we show results from simulations of GENESIS and Galileo-like constellations with joint orbit and clock determination. We assess the orbit quality of GENESIS based on nadir-only, zenith-only, and combined nadir–zenith GNSS observations. The results prove that GENESIS and Galileo joint orbit and clock determination substantially improves Galileo orbits, satellite clocks, and even ground-based clocks of GNSS receivers tracking Galileo satellites. Although zenith and nadir GNSS antennas favor different orbital planes in terms of the number of collected observations, the mean results for each Galileo orbital plane are improved to a similar extent. The 3D orbit error of Galileo is improved from 27 mm (Galileo-only), 23 mm (Galileo + zenith), 16 mm (Galileo + nadir), to 14 mm (Galileo + zenith + nadir GENESIS observations), i.e., almost by a factor of two in the joint GENESIS + Galileo orbit and clock solutions.