In response to scientific user recommendations, precise orbital products and platform data files computed by the Copernicus POD Service, have been officially released for the Sentinel-3 mission, on the Copernicus Data Hub service.
The products include:
- Near Real Time (NRT) Restituted Orbit File (file type: SR___ROE_AX), with a latency of 24h, and a retention policy on the Open Data Hub of 1 month.
- Medium Orbit Ephemerides (MOE) Orbit File (file type: AUX_MOEORB), with a latency of 2 days, and a retention policy on the Open Data Hub of 1 month.
- Precise Orbit Ephemerides (POE) Orbit File (file type: AUX_POEORB), with a latency of 26 days.
- Precise Platform Data files (file type: AUX_PRCPTF), with a latency of 26 days.
Users can access these products from the ESA Open Access Data Hub starting from 14 January 2020 through the Open Hub web portal. The full mission data set of Precise Orbit Ephemerides (POE) Orbit Files is available and completed on a daily basis. The product formats are described in the Product Format Specification (PFS) document.
The availability of the Sentinel-3 orbital products complement previous publication of ancillary data and products, including:
- GPS Rinex observation files (also found on the same Data Hub)
- Satellite parameters for POD (mass history file, manoeuvre file, and GPS Antenna ANTEX)
- Sentinel-3 Properties for GPS POD.
By releasing the Sentinel-3 precise orbit and platform data files (Sentinel-1 products will also be published soon), together with the GPS Rinex Observation and the other ancillary files, the Copernicus Programme aims at supporting the scientific community involved in many geodetic applications worldwide and encourage new uses for the Sentinels GNSS data, maximising the missions' return and becoming a reference for GNSS processing.