The second batch of Zhuhai-1 microsatellites was successfully launched on 26 April 2018. The batch included four Orbita hyperspectral satellites (referred to as OHS-A, OHS-B, OHS-C, and OHS-D) and one video satellite (OVS-2A), which have excellent hyperspectral data acquisition abilities. For the first time in China, a number of hyperspectral satellite networks have been realized. To ensure the application of hyperspectral remote sensing data, a series of on-orbit geometry processing and accuracy verification studies has been carried out on the “Zhuhai-1” hyperspectral camera since the satellite was launched. This paper presents the geometric processing methods involved in the production of Zhuhai-1 hyperspectral satellite basic products, including geometric calibration and basic product production algorithms. The OHS images were used to perform on-orbit geometric calibration, and the calibration accuracy was better than 0.5 pixels. The registration accuracy of the image spectrum of the basic product after calibration, the single orientation accuracy, and the accuracy of the regional network adjustment were evaluated. The spectral registration accuracy of the OHS basic products is 0.3–0.5 pixels, which is equivalent to the spectral band calibration accuracy. The single orientation accuracy is better than 1.5 pixels and the regional network adjustment accuracy is better than 1.2 pixels. The generated area orthoimages meet the seamless edge requirements, which verifies that the OHS basic product image has good regional mapping capabilities and can meet the application requirements.
The rapid growing number of earth observation missions and commercial low-earth-orbit (LEO) constellation plans have provided a strong motivation to get accurate LEO satellite position and velocity information in real time. This paper is devoted to improve the real-time kinematic LEO orbits through fixing the zero-differenced (ZD) ambiguities of onboard Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) phase observations. In the proposed method, the real-time uncalibrated phase delays (UPDs) are estimated epoch-by-epoch via a global-distributed network to support the ZD ambiguity resolution (AR) for LEO satellites. By separating the UPDs, the ambiguities of onboard ZD GPS phase measurements recover their integer nature. Then, wide-lane (WL) and narrow-lane (NL) AR are performed epoch-by-epoch and the real-time ambiguity–fixed orbits are thus obtained. To validate the proposed method, a real-time kinematic precise orbit determination (POD), for both Sentinel-3A and Swarm-A satellites, was carried out with ambiguity–fixed and ambiguity–float solutions, respectively. The ambiguity fixing results indicate that, for both Sentinel-3A and Swarm-A, over 90% ZD ambiguities could be properly fixed with the time to first fix (TTFF) around 25–30 min. For the assessment of LEO orbits, the differences with post-processed reduced dynamic orbits and satellite laser ranging (SLR) residuals are investigated. Compared with the ambiguity–float solution, the 3D orbit difference root mean square (RMS) values reduce from 7.15 to 5.23 cm for Sentinel-3A, and from 5.29 to 4.01 cm for Swarm-A with the help of ZD AR. The SLR residuals also show notable improvements for an ambiguity–fixed solution; the standard deviation values of Sentinel-3A and Swarm-A are 4.01 and 2.78 cm, with improvements of over 20% compared with the ambiguity–float solution. In addition, the phase residuals of ambiguity–fixed solution are 0.5–1.0 mm larger than those of the ambiguity–float solution; the possible reason is that the ambiguity fixing separate integer ambiguities from unmodeled errors used to be absorbed in float ambiguities.
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