Congratulations Lukas!
On the 7th of May, Lukas Müller successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis entitled "Orbit Determination for LEO Constellations Based on Single-Satellite and Network Processing of GNSS Data".
Lukas is one of the last doctoral students from the Mathematical and Physical Geodesy (MPG) group led by Prof. Rothacher. After Prof. Rothacher's retirement, he joined the Space Geodesy group.
During his doctorate, Lukas investigated GNSS-based precise orbit determination for large constellations of small satellites. The first part of his dissertation, conducted in collaboration with the Swiss company Astrocast, focused on the real-time navigation performance of low-cost, off-the-shelf GNSS payloads in space and demonstrated that meter-level orbit determination of CubeSats is achievable with minimal costs and resources. In the second part of his thesis, Lukas examined the formation and the processing of a GNSS double-difference network in low-Earth orbit. This work resulted in the first successful realization of a free-network solution in space with cm-accuracy, based solely on GNSS double-difference observations between eight geodetic satellites. With this novel approach to precise orbit determination, Lukas' thesis made a valuable contribution to geodetic Earth observation using low-Earth orbit satellites.
After the Ph.D. defense, there was a nice apéro with the examination committee, colleagues and friends to celebrate Lukas' achievement.
