News & Events

ILRS Virtual World Tour 2020

24. november 2020:
In place of an International Laser Ranging Station (ILRS) Workshop this November, the ILRS wanted to take the opportunity to try something different and look in detail at a selection of stations in the global network. This 'Virtual World Tour' took place online on November 2-6, 2020, virtually visiting 5 ILRS stations in 5 days, stopping among others also at Zimmerwald Observatory operated by the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern, Switzerland.

Scale of Global Reference Frames from Galileo Data

3. November 2020:
The Center of Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE) of the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern (AIUB) successfully demonstrated for the first time that the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) could make an important and independent contribution to the determination of the scale when realizing new reference frames for the Earth thanks to the disclosure of the Galileo satellite antenna calibrations.

Callisto Geodesy

14. October 2020:
The subgroup "Orbit and Gravity Field Determination" of AIUB’s satellite geodesy group has recently initiated a new project, financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation, where the exploration of Callisto with an orbiting spacecraft is studied.

First Daylight Laser Measurements of a Space Debris Object

10. August 2020:
On June 24 2020, AIUB acquired the first ever daylight observations of a space debris object using a geodetic laser at the Swiss Optical Ground station and Geodynamics Observatory Zimmerwald. Such measurements may be essential to reduce the orbit uncertainty of space debris objects, hereby allowing spacecraft operators to identify close conjunctions and to devise and execute efficient avoidance maneuvers.

Breakup of an Atlas 5 upper stage observed

1. April 2019:

On March 26 we were informed by our Russian colleagues (Vladimir Agapov) that they discovered a breakup of the Atlas 5 upper stage 2009-047B (SSN 35816; apogee - 34708.9km, perigee – 6675.6km) on March 25, 2019, at 22:23 UTC. The following night we were successfully observing fragments from this event with 3 sensors at the Swiss Optical Ground Station and Geodynamics Observatory Zimmerwald. The attached animated gif shows a series of observations from the 0.8m ZimMAIN telescope.