With the development of the global navigation satellite system(GNSS), the hourly ultra-rapid products of GNSS are attracting more attention due to their low latency and high accuracy. A new strategy and method was applied by the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) Analysis Center (AC) of the international GNSS Monitoring and Assessment Service (iGMAS) for generating 6-hourly and 1-hourly GNSS products, which mainly include the American Global Positioning System (GPS), the Russian Global’naya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikova Sistema (GLONASS), the European Union’s Galileo, and the Chinese BeiDou navigation satellite system (BDS). The 6-hourly and 1-hourly GNSS orbit and clock ultra-rapid products included a 24-h observation session which is determined by 24-h observation data from global tracking stations, and a 24-h prediction session which is predicted from the observation session. The accuracy of the 1-hourly orbit product improved about 1%, 31%, 13%, 11%, 23%, and 9% for the observation session and 18%, 43%, 45%, 34%, 53%, and 15% for the prediction session of GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BDS Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), Inclined Geosynchronous Orbit (IGSO), and GEO orbit, when compared with reference products with high accuracy from the International GNSS service (IGS).The precision of the 1-hourly clock products can also be seen better than the 6-hourly clock products. The accuracy and precision of the 6-hourly and 1-hourly orbit and clock verify the availability and reliability of the hourly ultra-rapid products, which can be used for real-time or near-real-time applications, and show encouraging prospects.

The radio-occultation technique can provide vertical profiles of planetary ionospheric and atmospheric parameters, which merit the planetary-climate and space-weather scientific research so far. The Tianwen-1 one-way single-frequency radio-occultation technique was developed to retrieve Mars ionospheric and atmospheric parameters. The first radio-occultation event observation experiment was conducted on 5 August 2021. The retrieved excess Doppler frequency, bending angle, refractivity, electron density, neutral mass density, pressure and temperature profiles are presented. The Mars ionosphere M1 (M2) layer peak height is at 140 km (105 km) with a peak density of about 3.7 × 10¹⁰ el/m³ (5.3 × 10¹⁰ el/m³) in the retrieved electron-density profile. A planetary boundary layer (−2.35 km~5 km), a troposphere (temperature decreases with height) and a stratosphere (24 km–40 km) clearly appear in the retrieved temperature profile below 50 km. Results show that Tianwen-1 radio occultation data are scientifically reliable and useful for further Mars climate and space-weather studies.

Tropospheric delay is a major error source for the high-accuracy Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) technique due to rapid water vapor variations. The Niell mapping function (NMF) and Global Mapping Function (GMF) are extensively applied to convert zenith tropospheric delay to slant delays for real-time deep-space VLBI operations. In this study, we quantitatively evaluate the performance of different empirical Mapping Functions for VLBI signal correction, with Vienna Mapping Function 3 (VMF3) and Water Vapor Radiometer (WVR) applied to track Tianwen-1 spacecraft simultaneously. Quantitative tropospheric delay comparisons demonstrate that empirical Global Pressure and Temperature 3 (GPT3) outperform NMF and GMF on BJMY and SHAO, while, GMF performs better at YNKM and CUAO under low elevation angles (1°–30°). Further evaluation of VLBI delay residual across six baselines indicated that at low elevations, the average residual RMS with GPT3 decreases from 5.96 ps to 1.89 ps, representing a 68% improvement relative to GMF. This study provides a reliable reference for tropospheric delay calibration in deep-space tracking and other VLBI-based radio observations, particularly for low-elevation scenarios.