[IGSMAIL-122] IGS Status Report, October 21, 1992

[Gerhard]

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IGS Electronic Mail       22-OCT-1992 09:17:16       Message Number 122
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IGS Status Report, October 21, 1992
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IGS Oversight Committee Meeting at Goddard Space Flight Center
                   (15/16 October 1992)
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 - An IGS information session was scheduled Thurday morning, October 15
   at the DOSE principal investigators workshop. The contributions
   demonstrated that the 1992 IGS campaign really was a great success.

 - Thursday afternoon and Friday were reserved for the IGS Oversight
   Committee and the 1992 IGS Campaign Participants Meeting. The meeting
   was very well attended, underlining once more the interest of the
   international geodetic and geophysical community in our project.

 - It is certainly too early for a complete overview of the Goddard events:
   More information will be given in a later IGS e-mail message, a detailed
   summary of the 1992 IGS Oversight Committee Meeting will be given in the
   next newsletter edited by the Central Bureau. (The working group reports
   are needed for that purpose).

 - Let me briefly summarize the most important management/business matters
   discussed at the Goddard meeting, based on the working group report
   already delivered by Ivan I. Mueller (!) :

       The 1992 IGS Campaign officially ended 23 September 1992.
       As requested in the IGS Status Report of 14 September 1992 data
       collection and data analysis continued on an inofficial basis.
       Let me express the thanks of the Oversight Oommittee to all
       observatories, data centers, and analysis centers for making this
       possible.

       The IGS PILOT SERVICE will start on 1 November 1992. This decision
       was taken unanimously. In the new undertaking the emphasis is on
       the SERVICE (showing up twice in the title), meaning that (a) a better
       adherence to standards on all levels has to be reached and that
       (b) the core and the fiducial network have to be completed.

       In this coordination tasks the Central Bureau and the Analysis Center
       Coordinator have to play important roles, the former concentrating
       on observational aspects, the latter on processing aspects. It is
       clear that these roles have to be based on the decisions taken in
       the working groups. In particular it is expected that a routine
       quality control for the orbits is set up by the analysis center
       coordinator for the period of the IGS PILOT SERVICE.

       Decisions concerning Epoch'92 :

          Bernard Minster was officially declared responsible as coordinator
          for Epoch'92 and for future similar experiments.

          It was recommended that the processing centers should reprocess
          the core data of Epoch'92 with the state of knowledge they have
          today. If this state did not change since the time they handled
          the Epoch'92 time slot for the first time, a reprocessing is
          not necessary. The IGS analysis center coordinator will come up
          with a suggestion for the official IGS orbit(s) for this time
          period.

          The Fiducial Network Plan will be provided by Bernard Minster.
          Future Epoch Campaigns will be organized, but only a regional
          and not a global coordination of such events will be required.

       Starting with 1 November 1992 there will be separate IGS mailboxes
       (a) for weekly reports plus related routine information, and (b) for
       messages of more general interest.  This service is provided by
       the University of Berne during the period of the PILOT SERVICE,
       it should be moved to the Central Bureau when the official IGS
       service starts.

       The IERS call for participation (due 1 February 1993) was
       discussed in detail. The general opinion was that this issue
       should be discussed with the IERS Steering Board in view of
       the new situation created by the obvious success of the 1992
       IGS Test Campaign.

       There will be a business meeting of the oversight committee at the
       AGU Fall meeting, the most urgent agenda items will be

          Status of Epoch'92
          quality control issues
          Discussion of the IERS Call for Proposals

                                                    Kind regards

                                                    Gerhard Beutler