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Abstract

The development of space techniques is essential for accurately describing and understanding the processes taking place on the surface of the Earth, but also to meet the requirements of the Global Geodetic Observing System - GGOS. One of the space geodetic techniques is satellite laser ranging (SLR) which provides a substantial contribution to the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF) realization along with the determination of global geodetic parameters including the low-degree harmonics of the Earth's gravity potential. The ITRF realizations use mostly observations to the two LAGEOS and two Etalon satellites. Now, the extension of the ITRF solution to include observations to two LARES satellites is being considered. The observations of other SLR satellites, such as Starelette, Stella, Ajisai, and Larets are also used to determine the low-degree gravity coefficients. Determining the gravitational potential from observations to SLR satellites is important due to the need to replace the C₂₀ and C₃₀ coefficients in solutions from the GRACE-Follow On. This study investigates which orbital parameters such as inclination angle, altitude, and eccentricity would be best suited for a future geodetic satellite to determine the Earth rotation parameters, geocenter, and the low-degree harmonics of the Earth's gravity potential. We perform simulations for satellites placed at different inclination angles, at different altitudes, as well as for different eccentricities of orbits. Eventually, we derive two types of solutions – one with parameterization consistent with the SLR contribution to the ITRF realization and the second oriented towards the quality of derived gravity field coefficients.