National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The MGO SGSLR shelter is built and getting ready to accept the dome. This picture shows the temporary roof covering the dome ring wall and protecting that part of the roof where the hole for the gimbal is located. Dome installation is expected at the end of January 2020.

The SGP is making available to the public a version of the GEODYN orbit determination and geodetic parameter estimation software tool. A full description of the software and download options are available here:

https://space-geodesy.nasa.gov/techniques/tools/GEODYN/GEODYN.html.

The riser bolted to the pier

Gimbal #1 and mass simulator (GMS) were crated and shipped from Cobham in Lansdale PA and delivered to GGAO early in the week of September 16th. The riser, which is needed to mate the pier with the gimbal, was also delivered to GGAO early that week.

The riser was lifted by crane into place through the dome slit in the SGSLR shelter early in the morning of the 19th and bolted to the pier.

Later that morning, once the riser installation was complete, the GMS was lifted by crane through the dome slit into place in the SGSLR dome area and attached to the top of the riser.

GMS being lifted by a crane

Power and servo controller cables were connected to the GMS. Later that same day, Cobham employees were able to move the mount under computer control through the servo controller. This was followed by NASA/KBR connecting their computer and moving the mount.

The final levelling of the mount still needs to be done, and offsets for the encoders must be determined before star calibrations can be attempted. The mass simulator has a tertiary mirror (no primary or secondary mirrors) but we expect to be able to see enough stars to do a rough initial star calibration.

Installed GMS

This installation will allow NASA/KBR to test the performance of the gimbal and also checkout the GTA test software. Meanwhile in Lansdale, Cobham is working to complete gimbal #2 and test it. Once the first telescope is ready, gimbal #1 will be shipped back to Lansdale and mated with the telescope in preparation for the first Gimbal and Telescope Factory Acceptance Test (FAT).

The MGO dome

The MGO dome successfully passed the Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) at Baader Planetarium in Mammendorf Germany on September 19, 2019. Scott Wetzel (KBR) and Julie Horvath (KBR) were in attendance. They approved the FAT and accepted the dome. Installation of the dome at MGO is expected to occur in January 2020.

Michel Lefebvre has passed away at his home on July 21, 2019 after a long illness.

He was one of the French pioneers and a major actor in satellite geodesy.

He contributed enormously to training the researchers and engineers of today in this discipline, at the time of the formation of GRGS (Groupe de Recherche de Geodesie Spatiale), which resulted from the cooperation of research teams at CNES (Michele’s team), Meudon Observatory and others. This was also the time of international satellite observing campaigns (ISAGEX, Trapol, Medoc, etc.) in which Michel was deeply involved.

Michel always was eager to debate on new ideas, his energy and enthusiasm were incredible, which were essential to the development of our projects and our works over fifty years, also to the rising of vocations in our field. He had a strong charisma, though a warm personality, respectful of everyone’s viewpoint. His constructive spirit and creativity were striking and he was carefully listened to within national (CNES, GRGS, Bureau des Longitudes) and international (NASA, DLR, ESA) organizations.

As a leading expert, he had a prominent and determining role in the realization of the first satellite altimetry missions, especially TOPEX-Poseidon. Michel set the stage for the creation of the Laboratoire d’Etude en Geophysique et Oceanographie Spatiale (LEGOS), and had decisive actions in changing the French oceanographic community. He established the Club of Argonauts, in which oceanographers and climatologists discuss scientific and societal aspects of climate change. He also was at the origin of GODAE (Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment) and of Mercator Ocean (the French center for ocean predictions and analysis).

Michel has left his mark on many young people who started their career with him. They went their own way but kept good and fruitful relationship with him. His death brings back lots of memories to all of us. A strong personality has left us.

Our thoughts are with his wife Claude and their children and grandchildren.

The National Geodetic Survey posted the results of their local tie survey at the NSGN Haleakala site on Maui, Hawaii. Vectors were measured between the SLR and GNSS station and ground marks to support the International Terrestrial Reference Frame and NGS's Foundation CORS program. The survey results, report, and SINEX file are available at the NGS website.

SGP Project Manager Stephen Merkowitz was interviewed by TVPerú in Spanish for a story on the NASA Satellite Laser Ranging Station TLRS-3 in Arequipa, Peru that aired on TVPerú Noticias. A version of the story was also aired in Quechua: https://youtu.be/wNyjMAAhS7M

The first circular for the 2019 ILRS Technical Workshop has been released. The workshop will take place October 21-25 in Stuttgart, Germany.

The dome Site Acceptance Test (SAT) was performed Friday morning May 3rd and it was successful. Here is a team picture of the Baader and SGSLR teams in the dome after the successful SAT.

The dome for the new SGSLR shelter building at GGAO was assembled by the Baader Planetarium team in the GGAO parking lot. Once the dome was built, on May 1st a crane arrived to perform the lifting. The dome ring, followed by the dome itself, were lifted and installed on the roof.

The shelter before the dome was installed

The shelter after the dome was installed

The shelter continues to progress. The doors and windows are taking shape and the roof is being worked.

The sea container with the dome parts arrived at the port of Baltimore from Germany on April 15th and was delivered to GGAO the morning of April 18th. There was a great deal of excitement at GGAO when it arrived and a lot of the site construction and SGSLR teams were there to greet it. A large forklift was required to remove it from the truck as it weighs over 5000 lbs. It is currently resting just North of NGSLR, waiting for the Baader team to arrive and assemble the parts and then install the dome on the shelter.

The shelter under construction

The freight container with the dome parts

Jan McGarry, NASA GSFC, gave a presentation to the GSFC Astronomy Club on April 09, 2019 highlighting the initial development and testing of the SGSLR system at Goddard’s Geophysical and Astronomical Observatory (GGAO). The talk also included background on SLR and NASA’s legacy SLR network, as well as the ILRS and SGP and future plans for the global deployment of SGSLR systems.

A winter storm damaged commercial power transmission lines to the observatories on Haleakala, Hawaii, USA on February 10, 2019. Commercial power to TLRS-4 at Haleakala has been restored.

The SGSLR dome passed Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT) on March 5th at the Baader Planetarium factory outside of Munich Germany. The Baader development team and the three members of the SGSLR team who were at Baader’s facility for the FAT took time the following day for a group photo with the SGSLR dome. This is the dome that will be delivered to GGAO sit on top of the shelter.

Standing on the dome flap are McGarry, Donovan and Wetzel. Just to the right of the dome is Thomas Baader.

Watch the SGSLR dome in action below.

The shelter goes up in an all-day-long activity. The sun is setting as the roof is finally lowered onto the building by crane. MOBLAS-7 can be seen in the left foreground of the picture.

The SGSLR shelter after installation. The building is together but clearly needs a lot of finishing work including adding the door and windows and the interior build out.

The roof is lowered onto the building

Installed shelter

Intertronic Solutions Inc. completed the installation of the Space Geodesy Project’s new 12-meter VLBI antenna at the McDonald Observatory in Texas. An engineering room-temperature feed, developed and installed by MIT Haystack, was used to support the pointing tests. On February 15, 2019 several extragalactic sources were observed and the antenna successfully passed the Site Acceptance Test (SAT) on February 20, 2019. The MIT Haystack-developed cryogenic broadband signal chain will be installed in April after which the station will be ready to begin commissioning and participating in VGOS test sessions.

DORIS antenna in the foreground with VLBI antenna in the background

The rear side of the VLBI antenna on its mount

The underside of the VLBI antenna with a person in a lift near the top

With the Government Shutdown now over, the pad has been poured. MOBLAS-7 is in the background with the telescope in the left most of the three trailers and the aircraft avoidance radar sits atop the center trailer.

The concrete pad for the shelter for the new SGSLR system has been poured

A winter storm damaged commercial power transmission lines to the observatories on Haleakala, Hawaii, USA. Since February 10, TLRS-4 has been without power.

The local electric power company estimates repair to take a minimum of 4 weeks and as long as 8 weeks. The team is exploring ways to power the site with a backup generator or by connecting to a nearby observatory that has backup power.

Planning for the 2019 ILRS Technical Workshop has begun! We ask that you mark your calendars and reserve the date for the next gathering of the ILRS community:

Dates: October 21-25, 2019
Location: Stuttgart, Germany

The workshop will be sponsored by the DLR in Stuttgart, Germany. The program committee is actively working on the defining the theme and session topics for the workshop while the local organizers are planning the workshop logistics.

The first circular for the workshop will be issued in the very near future.

We hope you will consider attending the workshop!

NBC Sunday Today recently reported on lunar laser ranging activities at the APOLLO system in Sunspot NM.

It is with profound sadness that we must announce to you the passing our colleague, Dr. Richard Biancale, geodesist, recently retired from the CNES in September 2018, and most recently working at the GFZ (Oberpfaffenhofen) with Dr. Frank Flechtner on GRACE Follow-On. We were informed of his death on Monday February 4, 2019 from a heart attack while skiing in the Alps.

Richard had a long and distinguished career in Space Geodesy. He received his Ph.D. in 1978 from the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris (France) while working under Professor Cristoph Reigber at the Technical University of Munich (Germany). He worked as a research scientist at the University of São Paulo, at the DGFI (Deutsches Geodãtisches Forschungsinstitut) in Munich (Germany), and at CERGA (Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches en Géodynamique et Astronométrie) Grasse (France), before joining the French Space Agency, the CNES (Toulouse, France) in 1982 as a scientific engineer.

Under the direction of Michel Lefebvre, one of his first jobs at the CNES was to define the DORIS tracking system for the TOPEX/Poseidon mission. Since 1984, he was very involved in the French-German cooperation on gravity field modeling, first with the GRIM models, and then with the EIGEN models after the launches of CHAMP and GRACE. He served as the scientific manager of the Stella laser geodetic satellite, launched in 1993. Under the direction of Dr. Georges Balmino, he became chief of the "Terrestrial and Planetary Geodetic Department" of the CNES in 1992. He received his "Habilitation" in 2006 and, starting in 2008, served as Executive Director of the Groupe de Recherche de Géodésie Spatiale (GRGS), a French national group that gathers 120 researchers from organizations involved in Space Geodesy studies.

Over the course of his career he has supervised and inspired more than a dozen Ph.D students and served as a mentor to many colleagues and young scientists. Understanding the importance of training the next generation of scientists in satellite geodesy, he has taught geodesy for over 25 years at engineer schools (e.g. ENSG [École de la Géomatique/National School of Geographic Sciences], ENSTA [École Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées]), at universities (e.g. Paris VI), and short training courses (e.g. GRGS Summer School).

Throughout his career he has worked assiduously to improve the quality of geodetic data, and to advance the science obtained from these data. He was a strong proponent of the need for improving the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF), supporting the contributions to the IDS, IGS, ILRS, IVS and IERS. He has participated and led national and international proposals for new innovative space missions that would continue to advance the contribution of geodesy to science and society. Most recently, before and after his retirement from CNES, he worked to advance the proposal for the Tahiti Geodetic Observatory, a fundamental station including VLBI, SLR, GNSS and DORIS whose geographic location would be of prime importance to the ITRF and to the mm-level goals of the Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) in the next decade.

As many of his colleagues noticed, Richard Biancale had a joie de vivre. He was a charming, free, passionate and cheerful man who embraced life whether it was in a fine restaurant after a scientific meeting, sailing around the Mediterranean or across the Atlantic on his catamaran, "RaphyO2", or visiting interesting cultural or natural locales. As his colleagues, we were all privileged to enjoy his friendship. We lament this tragic loss.

To his family, including wife, Irmtraud, and four children, Raphaël, Philipp, Johannes & Jocelyne, we extend our deepest sympathy and most heartfelt condolences.

The SGSLR pad and pier at MGO were completed in January 2019. The electrical panels were temporarily placed on one side of the pad until the shelter could be installed.

The SGSLR pad and pier at MGO