Subject: [SLR-Mail] No.2544: ESA Living Planet Symposium, 13-17 May 2019, Milan, Italy, Session on "Precise Orbit Determination of Earth Observation Satellites - Progress, Validation, and Challenges" From: Heike Peter Dear colleagues, I would like to draw your attention to a session on ”Precise Orbit Determination of Earth Observation Satellites - Progress, Validation, and Challenges” at the ESA Living Planet Symposium (https://lps19.esa.int) on 13-17 May 2019 in Milan, Italy. As the title already assumes the session is on POD of Earth Observation Satellites, including all issues and investigations done in the field of POD for low Earth orbiting satellites requiring highly precise orbits. For more details please find the entire session description below. Please kindly consider to contribute to the session. Abstract submission deadline is 11 November 2018. Please spread the information on this session also in your institute and to your colleagues. Kind regards Heike Peter PosiTim UG B.6 Calibration, validation and data quality B6.01 Precise Orbit Determination of Earth Observation Satellites - Progress, Validation, and Challenges Precise orbit determination (POD) is essential for the applications of many Earth Observation Satellites, such as radar altimetry, InSAR, radio occultation or gravity field recovery. The Copernicus Sentinel satellites, ESA Earth Explorer missions like GOCE, CryoSat, Swarm, and other missions like Jason, GRACE/GRACE-FO, or the MetOp satellites could be mentioned as part of a long list of Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) satellites requiring highly precise orbit products. The main observation techniques of GNSS, DORIS, and SLR are available for this purpose and they are either used for POD or for independent validation of orbits derived from other techniques. The progress in POD over the last years is tremendous due to improved gravitational and non-gravitational force modelling, reduction of measurement-specific systematic errors but also due to common use of efficient GPS carrier phase ambiguity-fixing and improved internal and external validation methods. Upcoming multi-GNSS observations from the LEOs are a new challenge but also a great opportunity for POD. Radar altimetry and InSAR processing are relying on precise knowledge of the satellites positions but these techniques may also be used for validating the quality of the orbit. Submissions related to but not limited to the following topics are encouraged: - LEO POD in general - Status, progress and improvements of POD for current and past Earth Observation missions - Challenges and developments for future missions, in particular Sentinel-C/-D and -6 mission - Independent and external validation methods (cross-over analysis, InSAR, etc.) - Combination between different missions - New ideas, methods, and applications of POD for Geosciences -- ---------------------------------------------- Dr. Heike Peter Senior Consultant PosiTim UG Germany Tel.: +49 2255 9239616 Fax: +49 2255 9239615