IVS What's New
News 2021
| Date |
What's New |
| 2021 October 5 |
Space Geodesy lost a longtime colleague and friend with the passing of Thomas Arvid Clark
on September 28, 2021. Tom was a pioneer in Space Geodesy and Very Long Baseline Interferometry
(VLBI), and a founding member of the NASA Crustal Dynamics Project.
Tom received his B.S. in Engineering Physics and his Ph.D. in Astro-Geophysics from the
University of Colorado in 1961 and 1967 respectively. From 1966 to 1968, he served as Chief
of the Astronomy Branch at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and as Project Scientist on the
Spacelab Coronagraph. At GSFC, where he moved in 1968, Tom received numerous NASA awards for
his pioneering work on Radio Astronomy Explorer 1 and 2 and several generations of Very Long
Baseline Interferometry systems. Tom developed the Totally Accurate Clock (TAC), an inexpensive
GPS timing receiver that found widespread use in a number of global networks. Tom was named a
Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in 1991 and a Fellow of the International
Association of Geodesy (IAG) in 1999. Tom was also a pioneer in amateur and digital radio; he
designed and flew several low cost satellites for relaying amateur radio messages around the
globe and is a past president of AMSAT. He was one of only 50 initial inductees into the CQ
Amateur Radio Hall of Fame, a list which included such engineering luminaries and inventors
as Guglielmo Marconi (radio), Samuel Morse (telegraph), Nikola Tesla (HF generators and radio),
and John Bardeen and William Schockley (transistor). Tom retired from GSFC in 2001 but
remained active in Amateur Radio activities.
Those of us who worked with Tom during the Crustal Dynamics period remember him as a brilliant
mind, a very interesting and sometimes caustic character, but someone who was kind, supportive,
and very helpful to those of us around him. We will miss him.
|
| 2021 August 23 |
The Minutes of
the 44th DB Meeting (ersatz #2) were posted. |
| 2021 August 11 |
The August issue of
the IVS Newsletter was posted on the Web site. This issue features the new IVS Chair
Rüdiger Haas.
|
| 2021 July 1 |
On August 2, 2021, it is planned that the IVS Data Centers switch
over to a new ingest software. The new software will apply stricter quality control for
the file name, compression type, and file format. The conventions, valid from August 2
onward, are compiled into a summary
reference document.
|
| 2021 June 30 |
The IVS website was augmented by a page about local VLBI ties under
the Network Stations tab as Local VLBI-derived Vector Ties.
The page compiles papers and presentations about local VLBI ties.
|
| 2021 June 30 |
Arthur Niell gave a seminar about the “VLBI tie between the legacy and VGOS geodetic antennas at Kokee Park Geophysical
Observatory, Hawaii, USA” in the GSFC Geodesy and Geophysics Lab Seminar series on June 15, 2021.
The slides and a recording of the seminar are available at the IVS OOC.
|
| 2021 April 12 |
Eskil Varenius gave an online seminar about
“Station
Amplitude Calibration: Why we need it and how to do it.” A recording of the seminar is available at
the IVS OOC:
https://vlbi.org/2021/04/12/seminar-stations-amplitude-calibration/.
|
| 2021 April 7 |
The April issue of
the IVS Newsletter was posted on the Web site. This issue features the Analysis Center
at ETH Zurich.
|
| 2021 January 8 |
The Call for
2019+2020 Biennial Report was posted. |
| 2021 January 3 |
The Minutes of
the 43rd DB Meeting (ersatz #2) were posted. |
|
