Celebrating 50 years of transatlantic geodetic radio science
04/06/2018

Fifty years ago this week, in April 1968, an historic event took place involving MIT Haystack Observatory radio telescope in Westford, Massachusetts, and its counterpart at Onsala Space Observatory in Onsala, Sweden: the first transatlantic geodetic very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations.

This occasion marks an important anniversary in geodesy; although the April observations were not entirely successful in terms of usable data, as VLBI was in its very earliest days, it was the first time that geodetic VLBI was performed across the Atlantic.

Today, NASA's Space Geodesy Project (SGP) operates a worldwide system of modern geodetic sites, including the broadband VGOS (VLBI Global Observing System) network, in collaboration with international partners around the globe.

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