14th IVS Directing Board meeting Summary notes Held at USNO, Washington, DC, USA September 12, 2005 Notes by DB, first version 051009 revised 051021 Attending: Wolfgang Schlueter, Arthur Niell, Chopo Ma, Dirk Behrend, Ed Himwich, Kerry Kingham, Yasuhiro Koyama, Bill Petrachenko, Harald Schuh, Zinovy Malkin, Patrick Wallace, Axel Nothnagel, Nancy Vandenberg, Franco Mantovani ACTIONS: 1. Welcome (Wolfgang Schlueter) Wolfgang Schlueter welcomed DB members to the meeting. There were apologies from Shigeru Matsuzaka, Alan Whitney, and Roy Booth. 2. Director Change at the Coordinating Center (Wolfgang Schlueter) Nancy Vandenberg steps down from the position of IVS Coordinating Center Director (IVS-CC) in September 2005. Dirk Behrend takes over the reponsibility of the director position. The official change- over was done at the meeting and approved by the Board. 3. ToR Changes due to Board Extension (Wolfgang Schlueter) The Terms of Reference (ToR) were changed to reflect the non-voting member representation of a FAGS representative. The changes pertain the following sections of the ToR: - section 2.7: add "FAGS" to the list of organizations the Coordinating Center provides liaison with; - section 4.2: add a "FAGS representative" to the appointed members ex officio increasing the number of appointed members to "five"; the total number of representatives amounts now to "16"; include the status of voice but no vote for the FAGS representative by adding "The FAGS representative is a non-voting member in accordance with FAGS requirements." The changes were adopted unanimously by the Board. 4. Reports and discussion 4.1 Chair's report (Wolfgang Schlueter) Activities since the last board meeting were reported. Correspondence: - Letter of appreciation to Bill Wildes on his retirement. - Letter of appreciation to the editors of the IVS Newsletter. Meetings: - FAGS (Federation of Astronomical and Geophysical Data Centers) meeting was held at UNESCO in Paris; FAGS is no longer supported by the International Council for Science (ICSU) as a body of ICSU. Publications: - two papers (IVS contribution to GGOS, VLBI2010) will possibly be published in the IAG Symposia series from Springer Verlag; final version for proceedings contribution by Sept 30, subsequent decision on inclusion in proceedings, electronic version on IAG web garanteed (available by end of 2005). 4.2. Coordinating Center report (Dirk Behrend) Activities since the last board meeting were: - Publication newsletters and Annual Report. - Maintenance of mailing lists and web site. - The migration from CDDISA to CDDIS was completed. - The Technical Operations Workshop (TOW) 2005 was organized in cooperation with MIT Haystack Observatory. - The Continuous VLBI Campaign 2005 (CONT05) was coordinated. For 15 days 11 stations are going to observe continuously at a rate of 256 Mbps. - Support for the 2005 IAG Scientific Assembly poster presentations and corresponding papers. - Coordination of the 4th General Meeting (GM2006). - Liaison with other services was done in the frame of the INDIGO and GGOS projects. The Directing Board supports the idea of organizing a VLBI School. 4.3. Observing Program Committee (Dirk Behrend) Issues discussed in the period since the last board meeting were: - CONT05 planning and design. - 2006 observing planning. - Geodetic source list and an R&D proposal by Oleg Titov. - Stimulation of R&D analysis. - Backup stations for Intensives. Wolfgang Schlueter was contacted regarding observing time for the Japanese SELENE (SELenological and ENgineering Explorer) lunar satellite mission. Wolfgang suggested that a proposal be sent to the OPC. 4.4. Analysis Coordinator report (Axel Nothnagel) Meetings: The Sixth IVS Analysis Workshop was held in Noto after the last Directing Board meeting. A summary of the meeting is posted on the Analysis Coordinator web page. Operations: Christoph Steinforth left 31 January 2005. Funding for the successor (Sarah Boeckmann) is secured. The timeliness of combination products is affected by late submittals from individual Analysis Centers (ACs) (e.g., analyst of single person group attends a meeting). Markus Vennebusch worked together with Zuheir Altamimi on the IVS contribution to the ITRF2004. The starting time of the VLBI sessions constitute a problem as it necessitates an extrapolation to another epoch causing additional errors. Research: EOP results reported directly and derived from inverting the normal equations should be identical, but showed in several instances systematic discrepancies (annual cycles and other signatures). The cause needs to be investigated. 4.5 Pilot Project "Time Series Baseline Length" (Axel Nothnagel) The web site of the Analysis Coordinator now has a trial online version of a linear regression computation for baselines using all SINEX files from the five participating ACs (BKG, USNO, GSFC, IAA, Vienna). It is still in the experimental phase, and thus not yet an official product. 4.6 Network Coordinator report (Ed Himwich) - Matera rail temporarily repaired - Kokee Park gearbox repaired - Fortaleza cryogenic problem repaired? Fortaleza has a Mark 5, but lacks 8 MHz and 16 MHz for wideband observing - Noto down due to missing part (encoder) - DSS65: was moved about 61 m, survey of new position at the cm-level. Station will be renamed to DSS65A for IVS analysis. - VLBA probably will adopt the "Kokee Standard" for clock offsets (Kokee set to zero, consistent with historical data). 4.7 Technology Coordinator report (Alan Whitney, presented by Arthur Niell) VSI-E: the beta version is ready for evaluation. Plan to use VSI-E in major international e-VLBI demonstration at SC2005 conference in Nov 2005 in Seattle. Plan to submit VSI-E protocol for approval by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as international standard after agreement within e-VLBI community and successful demonstrations. Zinoy Malkin stated that Svetloe already has a fiber connection. Zelenchukskaya and Badary's connection are in progress. Recent e-VLBI developments: Semi-automated regular e-VLBI UT1 Intensive data transfers from Wettzell to ISI-E (disks hand-carried to USNO for correlation) since June 2005. A few start-up problems, but now operating fairly smoothly. Two major global e-VLBI demos at conferences are planned: iGRID in Sep 2005 and SC2005 in Nov 2005. e-VLBI workshops: Successful e-VLBI workshop held in Sydney, Australia in July 2005. Next e-VLBI workshop will be held at Haystack probably in fall 2006. Mark 5A status: There are >100 Mk5 systems deployed at stations and correlators. Disk failure rate is about 0.5% each year. High Hitachi failure rates have led Conduant to qualify Maxtor, WD, and Seagate disks. But higher current draw of Maxtor and Seagate disks is requiring more robust power supplies in some systems. The upgrade to serial ATA is on hold because Conduant was unable to find sufficiently rugged SATA connectors. VLBA has upgraded 8 stations to Mark 5A; 9 Mark 5A units on VLBA correlator. Mark 5B status: 3 prototype Mark 5B systems currently under test. DIM capability is ~90% tested. Correlation of Mark 5B data (converted to Mark 5A format via software) was successful. Phase-cal extraction capability is currently being integrated into both DIM and DOM. ~20 Mark 5B interface boards will be distributed to Mark 5 development consortia members in the last quarter of 2005. Digital BBCs: There are two possible paths. 1) replacement of analog BBCs (EVN approach) with deployment planned by 2006; phase cal is still needed. [Franco: Gino Tuccari will show a prototype at the General Meeting in Concepcion.] 2) polyphase filters which partition the IF into adjacent channels; phase cal is not needed but system temperatures cannot be measured in the traditional way. Approach followed by Haystack together with Berkeley Space Science Center with NSF support; hope to deploy first prototype in early 2006. Track: A new version of "track" was completed by NRAO and is now in routine use. Changeover to updated version was relatively uneventful. Some disk modules are still incorrect, but are gradually being corrected. 4.8 Developments and Activities at Kashima and in Japan (Yasuhiro Koyama) - e-VLBI demonstrations: e-VLBI was demonstrated on June 5 during a visit of the Emperor and the Empress of Japan to Kashima Space Research Center. Full e-VLBI demonstrations are planned for the iGRID2005 (26-30 Sep, San Diego) and SC2005 (12-18 Nov, Seatle) conferences in collaboration with Haystack Observatory. Kashima will participate using K5. - CONT05: Tsukuba will participate in CONT05 using K5 and e-transfer to Haystack. Kashima will participate as tag-along station in one CONT05 session in order to be able to evaluate the expanded X-band receiver capability. - Syowa: Syowa started to use K5 in 2004. For the correlation of the 2004 CRD sessions at Bonn, the data need to be translated to Mark 5 at Haystack. To make the data exchange easier it was suggested that the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) buy a Mark 5 unit possibly turning NIPR into a K5-to-Mark-5 conversion center in Japan. - Software Correlator: License agreements were completed with KVN (Korea) and nearly completed with IRA (Italy). The license is free of charge. NICT and NAOJ were discussing the development of a 5 station software correlator for the VERA project to be developed in the next three years. GSI (Tsukuba) employs a software correlator of 40 PCs for processing the weekend Intensive sessions as well as domestic VLBI sessions. It is planned to increase the number of PCs to 56. 5. WG3 - VLBI2010 approval and release (Arthur Niell) Wolfgang reported that the WG3 final report was reviewed by Gerhard Beutler and Jan Kouba and considered an excellent report. The final report was accepted and the Working Group closed. The report should appear as special report in the 2005 Annual Report. A print version of the report should be sent to a list of people to be determined. An email with the on-line link to the final report is to be sent to the IVS, IGS, ILRS, and IDS exploder lists. 6. Systems Committee (Bill Petrachenko) Bill presented the Board with a proposal for a charter for the Committee. Franco suggested to add "co-location" to the list of approaches. Nancy, Wolfgang, and Harald suggested stressing the connection to the Vision 2010 WG and naming the new committee "VLBI2010 Committee". The initial member group should consist of Bill Petrachenko, Dirk Behrend, Johannes Boehm, Brian Corey, Ruediger Haas, Yasuhiro Koyama, Dan MacMillan, Zinovy Malkin, Arthur Niell, and Gino Tuccari. Bill will contact the member candidates to ask for their participation. The charter was approved and Bill Petrachenko was named chair of the VLBI2010 Committee. Once all members have confirmed their participation in the committee, Wolfgang will inform the community. 7. Items related to IAG, IAU, EVN 7.1 IAG 7.1.1 Report on Cairns Meeting (Harald Schuh) The IAG held its 2005 Scientific Assembly together with IAPSO and IABO in Cairns, Australia, in August. In the IAG Executive Committee meeting IAG's project GGOS was formally established. The new GGOS president is Markus Rothacher; Ruth Neilan and Hans-Peter Plag are vice- presidents. The Editorial Board of the Journal of Geodesy strongly encouraged special issues and more fast track papers (2-3 pages) to be published. Harald proposed to the IVS Board to have a special issue on VLBI with at least 6 papers. The proposal needs to be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief Will Featherstone. Full papers will need to be submitted 4-6 weeks after the 2006 General Meeting. The Board approved the proposal and Harald will contact W. Featherstone. An Altimetry Service is being set up. The chair will probably be Wolfgang Bosch. 7.1.2 EVGA (Axel Nothnagel) A charter for the European VLBI Group for Geodesy and Astrometry (EVGA) was established at the Noto meeting. The EVGA is not a subgroup of IVS, but rather a group of IVS Associate Members and other European scientists. The IVS supports the EVGA through the following acknow- ledgement: "IVS endorses the EVGA as the European focus of VLBI in the fields of geodesy and astrometry." 7.1.3 IERS (Chopo Ma) The IERS will hold a Workshop on Combination in Potsdam on October 10-11. Chopo will participate. 7.2 IAU (Patrick Wallace) FAGS/UNESCO meeting in Paris (May 2005): It is probably fair to say that the three unions involved do appreciate the importance and value of the various FAGS services, and that they will support the ongoing efforts to establish lasting solutions. The 2003-2005 report of the IAU Commissions/Divisions are due to be delivered to the IAU General Secretary by the beginning of October. The scientific programme of the next IAU General Assembly is available at http://astro.cas.cz/iau2006/SciProgram.html. The deadline for submitting abstracts is 26 June 2006 (sub- mission already open), abstract selection will be done before 4 July 2006. The IAU WG topics will be discussed at the Journees 2005 in Warsaw (19-21 Sept). The IAU Div I WG "Nomenclature for Fundamental Astronomy Working", chaired by Nicole Capitaine (Obs. de Paris), has prepared a glossary and various lists and schematics dealing with all the terms involved in implementing the IAU 2000 resolutions. This work is nearing completion. The IAU Div I WG "Precession and the Ecliptic", chaired by James Hilton (USNO), has almost completed a very detailed report on the choice of a precession model to replace the precession component of IAU 2000A. The Reviewing Board of IAU Div I task SOFA (Standards Of Fundamental Astronomy), chaired by Patrick Wallace, recently agreed to a number of revisions to the SOFA software and authorized a new release (the third) at the beginning of September. 7.3 EVN (Franco Mantovani) The Consortium Board of Directors (CBD) met in Hartebeestoek, South Africa on 23 May 2005. The EVN observing sessions in 2006 will take place in the time periods Feb 16 - Mar 09, Jun 01 - Jun 20, and Oct 19 - Nov 09. There was a critical design review of the Digital BBCs in Bologna on May 2nd. A prototype of the DBBC is expected to be available by the end of 2005. 8. General Meeting in Concepcion (Dirk Behrend) The Fourth IVS General Meeting will be held at Universidad de Concepcion, Concepcion, Chile, on January 9-13, 2006. The sessions and the convenors have been named. The next step is to prepare a list of invited speakers. On Monday or Tuesday a poster session is to be organized. 9. Miscellaneous Franco drafted a letter of support to be sent to the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) of Italy that was recently created and is the new sponsoring agency for VLBI activities in Italy. Wolfgang will send the letter to INAF.