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Free keywords:
Physics, Space Physics, physics.space-ph, Astrophysics, Earth and Planetary Astrophysics, astro-ph.EP
Abstract:
We investigate the post-fit range-rate residuals after the gravity field
parameter estimation from the inter-satellite ranging data of the gravity
recovery and climate experiment (GRACE) satellite mission. Of particular
interest is the high-frequency spectrum (f gt 20 MHz) which is dominated by the
microwave ranging system noise. Such analysis is carried out to understand the
yet unsolved discrepancy between the predicted baseline errors and the observed
ones. The analysis consists of two parts. First, we present the effects in the
signal-to-noise ratio (SNRs) of the k-band ranging system. The SNRs are also
affected by the moon intrusions into the star cameras field of view and
magnetic torque rod currents in addition to the effects presented by Harvey et
al. [2016]. Second, we analyze the range-rate residuals to study the effects of
the KBR system noise. The range-rate residuals are dominated by the
non-stationary errors in the high-frequency observations. These high-frequency
errors in the range-rate residuals are found to be dependent on the temperature
and effects of sun intrusion into the star cameras field of view reflected in
the SNRs of the K-band phase observations.
