8. April 2021:
In calendar-week 13 of this year alone the satellite observation station in Zimmerwald of the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern (AIUB) succeeded in measuring distances to over 700 satellites using a satellite laser ranging system. With this result it was the most successful station worldwide and was once more able to confirm and consolidate its foremost position at least of the northern hemisphere.
11. March 2021:
The German Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) has founded a virtual research center named “Gauss Center for Geodesy and GeoInformation”. The BKG will award contracts for research tasks to universities and research institutions via this center. On behalf of the BKG these institutions shall conduct diverse projects to gain new insights on different aspects within the disciplines of Geodesy and GeoInformation. The goal consists in subsequent using of the gained findings and developments of procedures and methods for operational works of the BKG. The Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern (AIUB), represented by its director Prof. Dr. Adrian Jäggi, is member of the advisory board of this center.
1. February 2021:
The Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern (AIUB) concluded a contract with the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) to launch the
Bernese POD Scientific Service that shall be provided to the Remote Sensing and Products (RSP) Division within EUMETSAT’s Technical and Scientific Support (TSS) Department. EUMETSAT intends to apply the Bernese GNSS Software (BSW) as a baseline software for its scientific and operational activities related to precise orbit determination (POD) involving several missions such as EPS/Metop, Sentinel-3, EPS-SG, Sentinel-6/Jason-CS and other missions of opportunity. For this purpose, EUMETSAT has initiated a Scientific Service contributing to the maintenance and evolution of the BSW as required for EUMETSAT’s POD applications.
21. December 2020:
Since July 2019, the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern (AIUB) operates the Combination Service for Time-Variable Gravity Fields (COST-G) of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG). COST-G first performs a quality control, analysing the signal content of the gravity fields provided by the GRACE-FO Analysis Centres (ACs), and then generates a combination. In November 2020, two years after the launch of the GRACE-FO satellites in May 2018, the combination at COST-G became operational, aiming at the combination of the monthly gravity fields derived from GRACE-Follow On (GRACE-FO) with short latency.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.