Summary Notes from the IVS Directing Board meeting Paris, 2000 September 17, 0900-1830 Attending: K. Kingham, A. Whitney, E. Himwich, P. Tomasi, T. Kondo, S. Matsuzaka, C. Ma, W. Cannon, A. Nothnagel, N. Capitaine, N. Vandenberg, W. Schlueter Pierre Couturier, President of Paris Observatory, welcomed the board. 1. Welcome and Board Issues Wolfgang Schlueter welcomed Kerry Kingham as the new Correlator and Operation Centers representative. Procedures in the Terms of Reference were followed to replace Marshall Eubanks who previously held this position. It was decided that IVS would send a letter to Marshall thanking him for his contributions to IVS and to the VLBI community. 2. Review Chair's report (Wolfgang Schlueter) The Chair informed Chris Reigber and John Degnan, chairs of IGS and ILRS, respectively, about the startup of the IVS Working Group to study mapping of the GPS satellites. Presentations about IVS were made at the EGS meeting in Nice and at the COSPAR meeting in Warsaw in the CSTG session. A paper is being prepared for publication in the COSPAR proceedings. A short report about IVS was written for the EVN Annual Report. Coordinating Center report (Nancy Vandenberg) Major activities of the Coordinating Center included publishing the Proceedings of the first General Meeting; supporting the first Working Group by setting up their e-mail list and web page; updating the Terms of Reference following discussion of the last board meeting; making the second t-shirt order; and preparing a web page for updating the 1999 Annual Report submissions (no component used the page to update their report.) Ongoing activities for the Coordinating Center include coordinating the Master Schedule, e-mail and address list maintenance, web site maintenance, and data center coordination. Plans for the next six months are to publish the 2000 Annual Report; support the Operations Workshop; support the Analysis Workshop; set up a web-based data base on CDDISA; and update the IVS web site with new pages. Network Coordinator report (Ed Himwich) The Operations Workshop is being planned. This meeting will be smaller than the last Chiefs Meeting, more hands on, and covering limited topics. Attendence will be limited to one technical expert from each Network Station or from each expertise area at a station. The Organizing Committee will be making an announcement soon. Station configuration files were received for 12 stations. This is a poor response and more should come in. A station performance data base was set up. Information is organized in a spreadsheet that can be sorted in various ways. Input includes station reports, correlator prepass reports, correlation reports, and analysis reports. There have been no analysis reports since the data base was started three months ago. For the period June-September there were were 31 sessions involving 190 station days. Of these station days, 77% were ok or had minor problems, 17% had moderate data loss, and 6% failed. This means 94% of the station dayes were usable. Analysis Coordinator report (Axel Nothnagel) Not as much was achieved in the first year as planned: there was more work to do and less time to do it, and the Analysis Centers are less active than was anticipated. A combined EOP-S solution is planned to be available as of October 1, if there are at least three submissions to combine. A paper about IVS was presented at the EGS meeting, and at the European VLBI meeting at Bologna. A paper was submitted to the special issue of Journal of Geodesy edited by Tom Herring and Jim Ray. Technology Coordinator report (Alan Whitney) The VSI-H (hardware) specification was completed after 18 months of work by 12 representatives of 12 different institutions. The VSI-H specification is formally submitted to IVS today. The GVWG discussed VSI-H favorably at its meeting in Manchester in August and will soon vote on it. Three groups are committed to using VSI: the Canadian S3 system, the Japanese 1-Gbit system, and Haystack's COTS system. The board voted to accept the VSI-H specification. IVS will endorse VSI-H publically, as will GVWG. Working Group report (Brian Corey, presented by Wolfgang Schlueter) Detailed technical discussions have been started among the group members. The report, mail messages, and papers may be read on the IVS web site at http://ivscc.gsfc.nasa.gov/WG/wg1/. CRL technology development report (Tetsuro Kondo) Development using the VSI standard will start next fiscal year which begins April 1. Development of the Giga-bit recorder is ongoing; it will be named "K5" eventually. Internet protocol has the potential to revolutionize VLBI because data recorders can be removed. CRL development is starting with a 1-channel system. There is still difficulty explaining why VLBI should continue with the Key Stone stations. Ownership of two antennas (Tateyama and Miura) was transferred to Japanese universities. The antennas have been disassembled, moved, and re-assembled. A strong recommendation is needed to continue VLBI monitoring of volcanic/seismic activity. 3. Observing Programs The board discussed a letter from Jim Ray suggesting that IVS set up its own observing programs. IVS has responsibility for its products but right now has no control over the observing program. The practical aspect of this suggestion would be to connect other institutions into IVS's work. It would result in more robustness in the system. Some board members felt that it would only mean extra work for IVS because funding institutions already will be doing the work and IVS having its own programs does not add value. Another view is that the "value added" by having IVS programs could be an added coherence to the overall observing program. The discussion was reminiscent of the "service" vs. "network" discussion that occurred while IVS was being formed. If IVS is a service, it might be recognized that "IVS does this work" and therefore your group doesn't need any funds itself, even though you are supporting the IVS programs! IVS should make clear that we have no funds. It was noted that the IERS holds the services directly responsible for providing products. It does not look to individual components or Operation Centers. Wolfgang Schlueter presented a proposal for making use of S2 and K4 resources. While Mark 4 correlators are processing all of the international geodetic data now, it would be useful to have one day per week of data correlated by a K4 correlator and one by S2. A committee of board members was set up to continue these discussions via e-mail and report back to the full board. Committee members are: Vandenberg, Nothnagel, Himwich, Kingham, Matsuzaka, and Cannon, representing respectively, the Coordinating Center, Analysis Coordinator, Network Coordinator, Correlator representative, K4 representative, and S2 representative. Schlueter is also a committee member as Chair. 4. Products IVS needs a clear statement of IVS products: what they are, how frequently they appear, how timely are they. IVS products should be timely, have high quality, and be reliable. The board discussed ways in which the Analysis Coordinator could encourage regular submissions to the IVS Data Centers by the Analysis Centers. Suggestions included personal contact, pressing harder, working with the ACs more closely, telecons, and deadlines. 5. IAU At the IAU General Assembly in Manchester, the IAU adopted resolution B1.1 which recognizes IVS as a service of IAU. The several resolutions involving VLBI were previously discussed at IAU Colloquium 180 and published in the Proceedings. It is now necessary that IVS apply to become a member of FAGS (Federation of Astronomical and Geophysical Services). The application will be submitted for consideration at the next FAGS meeting which is at the beginning of 2001. Chopo Ma agreed to be the IVS representative on the IAU Working Group on the International Celestial Reference System. 6. IERS Axel Nothnagel and Chopo Ma, as IVS representatives, attended the transitional IERS board meeting in Frankfurt. Each service (IVS, IGS, ILRS) will provide a single product to the IERS Product Centers. The Product Centers will combine these. 7. Related Groups At the last meeting, the board approved a new membership category called Affiliate Members. Such members do not have obligations to IVS but are interested in collaborating on issues of mutual interest. Applications were received from: Australia Institution: Australian National University Contact: Kurt Lambeck Areas of interest: data interpretation Hungary Institution: Satellite Geodetic Observatory Contact: Dr. I. Fejes Areas of interest: data analysis, technology development Germany Institution: Max-Planck-Institut fuer Radioastronomie Contact: Anton Zensus Areas of interest: correlation, coordination with EVN, technology development USA Institution: NRAO Contact: Craig Walker Areas of interest: technology development, observing The board voted to accept these institutions as Affiliate Members. 8. Publications Annual Report: The next Annual Report will cover the period March 1999 through December 2000. The call for reports will be sent by October 15, due date will be January 15. Brochure: A 3-fold flyer about IVS will be printed. The Coordinating Center will work with a graphics artist and get the flyers printed. IVS Information Document: IVS should have a document similar to the "IGS Information and Resources" document that gives general information about IGS. The Coordinating Center will develop such a document. Newsletter: The board discussed publication of a hard-copy newsletter. The Coordinating Center will take on this task, with the goal of publishing the first issue in January 2001. Web archives: IVS should have a web-accessible archive of papers about IVS and presentations made at meetings. The Coordinating Center will work on this. 9. Meetings TOW (Technical Operations Workshop): The TOW Organizing Committee will make an announcement soon. An attempt will be made to have the meeting materials in electronic form so that they can be archived on the web. GM2002 (IVS 2002 General Meeting): The next IVS General Meeting will be held in Japan in February 2002, sponsored by CRL and GSI, and IVS. The first circular will be mailed in January 2001. Analysis Workshop: An analysis workshop will be held at Goddard Space Flight Center in mid February. Specific dates will be set soon and an announcement sent. 10. Local surveys While local surveys are laborious and take time and effort, IVS should encourage the stations to do something somehow about surveys. 11. Miscellaneous Working Group Chairs: The board felt that chairs of Working Groups should be invited to present reports at board meetings when there is a significant event to report about. Next Board Meeting: The next board meeting will be held adjacent to the Analysis Workshop, in Maryland. New Board Members: The Chair appointed a committee of three, according to the Terms of Reference, to solicit nominations and conduct the elections for replacement of the board members whose terms are expiring in March 2000. The committee is Paolo Tomasi, Shigeru Matsuzaka, and Nancy Vandenberg. All current board members and the new ones should attend the next meeting. Advertising: Certain new VLBI-related books were announced via the IVS mail system, following a request by Ojars Sovers to use this facility. This type of request should be handled at the discretion of the Coordinating Center. Commercial Uses of VLBI Stations: At Tom Clark's request the board discussed possible commercial uses of the VLBI network. Certain commercial companies are planning deep space missions and are interested in data downlinks as well as accurate spacecraft tracking services. Coordination of these activities could be done through IVS and funds transferred back to the stations. The idea is attractive because it could generate funding for stations that may have problems finding adequate resources. The general feeling of the board was not enthusiastic. IVS could make the stations aware that these opportunities exist but IVS should not play any further role. There are concerns about liability and operational requirements from the customers.