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Abstract:
The data set provides GFZ VER11 orbits of altimetry satellites
ERS-1 (August 1, 1991 - July 5, 1996),
ERS-2 (May 13, 1995 - February 27, 2006),
Envisat (April 12, 2002 - April 8, 2012),
Jason-1 (January 13, 2002 - July 5, 2013) and
Jason-2 (July 5, 2008 - April 5, 2015)
TOPEX/Poseidon (September 23, 1992 - October 8, 2005),
derived at the time spans given at Helmholtz Centre Potsdam GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences within the Sea Level phase 2 project of the European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative using "Earth Parameter and Orbit System - Orbit Computation (EPOS-OC)" software and the Altimeter Database and processing System (ADS, http://adsc.gfz-potsdam.de/ads/) developed at GFZ. The orbits were computed in the same (ITRF2008) terrestrial reference frame for all satellites using common, most precise models and standards available and described below.
The ERS-1 orbit is computed using satellite laser ranging (SLR) and altimeter crossover data, while the ERS-2 orbit is derived using additionally Precise Range And Range-rate Equipment (PRARE) measurements. The Envisat, TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1 and Jason-2 orbits are based on Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) and SLR observations.
The orbit files are available in the Extended Standard Product 3 Orbit Format (SP3-c, ftp://igscb.jpl.nasa.gov/igscb/data/format/sp3c.txt) Files are gzip-compressed. File names are given as sate_YYYYMMDD_SP3C.gz, where "sate" is the abbreviation (ENVI, ERS1, ERS2, JAS1, JAS2, TOPX) of the satellite name, YYYY stands for 4-digit year, MM stands for month and DD stands for day of the beginning of the file.
More details on these orbits are provided in Rudenko et al. (2017)
