From: <David.Jauncey_at_email.protected>
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 22:16:00 +1100

Dear VLBI-ers,

The two-day meeting of the National Geospatial Reference Systems in
Canberra took place on February 1 - 2, was well attended and proved to
be a most interesting, useful and I hope ultimately productive exercise.

The meeting was called in response to a request from the National
Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy, NCRIS, to look at the
Geoscience area and produce a community-based proposal to provide
researchers with major research facilities. It's worth a visit to the
NCRIS website at
http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/research_sector/policies_issues_reviews/k
ey_issues/ncris/ to better understand their objectives. The Geoscience
area will cover several pillars including geodesy, geo-chemistry and
geo-magnetism. VLBI falls under the geodesy area.

NCRIS has sent similar requests, I believe, to 6 or 7 of their 18 or so
identified research areas, inviting the respective communities each to
prepare a single proposal which will then go ahead to NCRIS and request
appropriate funding. The time-scale is short; I believe proposals by
March - April and decisions by September.

VLBI is seen as an essential component of the Geoscience plan. VLBI
supplies, through the International Celestial Reference Frame, ICRF, the
only quasi-inertial reference system upon which the terrestrial
reference systems are based. The ICRF, in turn is the basis of the
International Terrestrial Reference Frame, ITRF.

I made a short presentation, which I distributed earlier, outlining the
value, for both geodesy and astronomy, of three proposed additional VLBI
antennas with suggested locations in Hobart, Western Australia
(Yarragadee?) and in Northern Australia (Katherine?). This seemed to
have been well received, and if I read the response correctly, it would
seem that the proposed new VLBI facilities have been accepted as doing
excellent science in both geodesy and astronomy. And as such, VLBI is
seen as a necessary part of the Geoscience proposal. Such a shared-use
facility seems to fit nicely into the NCRIS concepts.

As an aside, the point was made that "a thousand new GPS/Glonass/Galileo
sites would not improve the fundamental terrestrial reference frame at
all". The geodesists need a reference frame that is stable over decades,
hence their need for VLBI.

The consensus seems to be that the Geoscience proposal has an excellent
chance of success.

The meeting outcomes were summarized at the conclusion, and I've listed
here the top nine items, as these include the ones that are relevant to
VLBI:

1. Need to sell benefits to Governments
2. Must enhance and maintain reference system
3. Identify priority sciences that use the system or help make it
   (oceanography, radio astronomy, geophysics, seismic, atmospherics,
   crustal dynamics, plate tectonics, earth tides, climate change,
   sea level rise)
4. Need an order of magnitude improvement in earth monitoring
5. Datum maintenance improvement (semi or fully dynamic? (fixed time
epoch
   or time tagged?)
6. Continue to strengthen international collaboration 7. Distance
off-shore
   to extend the network eg Continental shelf, Antarctica, NZ
8. Real time computational capacity
9. Can we buy-in to future space missions?

Our New Zealand colleagues were also in attendance and I believe they
are delighted with item 7. I understand that Sergei sees this as a great
opportunity to potentially bring both New Zealand astronomers and
geodesists together in a bid to become an international partner with
this NCRIS program.

Re item 9; here is a section from the latest on the proposed VSOP-2
Space VLBI mission, from the latest APT Newsletter:

THE VSOP-2 MISSION
VSOP-2 is the space VLBI mission proposed to Japan's Institute of Space
and Astronautical Science (ISAS) to follow on from the successful VLBI
Space Observatory Programme. Three missions were proposed to ISAS in the
current round, and the evaluation process resulted in the VSOP-2 mission
being selected. This recommendation will be presented to the ISAS
Steering Committee for formal approval on March 3rd. Funding for the
successful mission could start as early as April 2007, with a launch in
January/February 2012.

An improved Australian LBA would be a significant enhancement for a
VSOP-2 mission.

A personal comment:

It has been clear that Australian VLBI has long needed additional
antennas particularly in the western and northern parts of the
continent. However, as the LBA, of necessity, makes use of our large
radio telescopes, Parkes, Narrabri and Tidbinbilla, domestic VLBI must
share these scarce resources with the rest of the radio community. It is
basically difficult for astronomy to justify new VLBI facilities if
these are only ever going to be used for a part of the time. The search
has long been for another VLBI community with whom to share new
facilities; the most likely is the geodesy community.

For the last 25 years, from the planning of the first SHEVE experiments,
Bob Preston and I have made deliberate efforts to involve the geodesy
community. In particular, geodesy, astrometry and Kurt Lambeck at the
ANU RSES and Art Stolz at UNSW School of Surveying, were a significant
part of the SHEVE program. And most recently Oleg Titov at Geoscience
Australia has enjoyed partial support from funds that I was able to
extract from COSSA.

So it is with some satisfaction that now there may be a good
(excellent?) chance of obtaining new shared-use facilities to assist
both communities. I hope this bid is successful.

Dave
Received on 2006-02-14 22:16:22