Recent News

Lunar Laser Ranging has resumed at the upgraded Grasse station. Developments were supported by several agencies including OCA, CNES, and the French national institute of the universe science.
The ILRS Governing Board has approved tracking of RadioAstron and CryoSat-2.
PROBA-2 was launched on November 02, 2009; SLR tracking will commence in early 2010.
ESA and the Galileo project have requested a special GIOVE-A tracking campaign for November 06-26, 2009 to characterise the nature of the so-called Y-bias.
Our colleague Werner Gurtner passed away on Saturday, October 24, 2009 after a long illness. Werner was the chair of the ILRS Governing Board since 2002 and one of the founding members of the IGS. He was responsible for the development of the SLR station at Zimmerwald. Werner will be greatly missed by the global geodetic
community.
An executive summary and full workshop report for the Fall 2009 ILRS Technical Workshop "SLR Tracking of GNSS Constellations" is now available.
The SLR global performance report card for the 3rd quarter of 2009 has been published.
STSAT-2A was launched on August 25, 2009; unfortunately, the satellite was lost due to a separation failure of fairing protecting the satellite.
ANDE was successfully deployed from the Space Shuttle on July 30, 2009.
The first two successful SLR passes between a terrestrial ground station and a spacecraft orbiting the Moon were obtained on July 1, and July 2, 2009 between the NGSLR station at Greenbelt, Maryland, USA, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The first pass was obtained between 22:11 and approximately 23:10 UTC on July 1, 2009. LRO is in a low-altitude, near-polar commissioning orbit around the Moon. All spacecraft systems are being carefully and systematically checked. The Lunar Ranging data to LRO are being analyzed and validated and the data flow and system operations for operational ranging to LRO are being tested. The LR system on LRO will supplement the S Band (radio) tracking system for purposes of precision orbit determination and gravity field improvement.
At the request of our Russian colleagues, GLONASS-115 replaces GLONASS-99 in the satellite tracking roster.
ESA's gravity mission GOCE (Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer) launched on March 17, 2009. Learn more about GOCE mission, including SLR's contribution to the mission through a demonstration of SLR at Herstmonceux.
A Web site for the presentations and proceedings from the 16th International Laser Ranging Workshop is now available.