Mobile VLBI transfer

Abstract

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has agreed to transfer Mobile Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) equipment and operations to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA will use these mobile systems to create and maintain a National Crustal Motion Network (NCMN) and to support NASA's Crustal Dynamics Project. Consisting of several fixed VLBI sites across the United States, and 40 to 50 additional sites established by mobile VLBI, the NCMN will provide a basic terrestrial coordinate system throughout the United States that has been referenced to the inertial system defined by the fixed VLBI stations. While monitoring crustal deformation across the United States, the NCMN will also establish base stations in the National Networks of Geodetic Control that will also provide accuracy criteria for use with differential and interferometric Global Positioning System receivers. This NCMN will gain further importance as the burden of geodetic observations shifts increasingly to satellite‐based techniques in the future.