Abstract Quality assessment of Tianhui-1C for space-borne dual-frequency GPS is put forward in this paper. The reduced-dynamics satellite orbit determination is based on pseudo-stochastic pulse estimation. The orbit quality tests are performed through orbit overlap comparisons. Then, the influence of the satellite receiver change from single frequency GPS to dual frequency GPS for the satellite photogrammerty is analyzed in theory. The results show that data availability of five types of observations collected by the Tianhui-1C onboard GPS receiver is better than 80%. The ratio of cycle slip is better than 47. The averaged RMSs of MPCs for P1-code and P2-code measurements are 0.22m, 0.23 m, respectively. Two sessions, which have a total of 48 h of space-borne GPS measurements, are compared through orbit overlap comparisons. The orbit quality tests are performed through orbit overlap comparisons with two sessions, in which the orbit accuracy of precise orbit determination with space-borne GPS measurements can achieve 3.65 centimeters. Increasing orbit accuracy will help improve the accuracy of the satellite photogrammerty without ground control points (CI) precision to 3.866 m, and ellipsoidal height error increase to 1.171 m.