Satellite Laser Ranging

Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) is an accurate space technique that provides range measurements to artificial Earth satellites. Thanks to its precision SLR contributes to the definition of the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF), provides the origin of the reference frame and the global scale. Apart from the contribution to the realization of the ITRF SLR provides: precise satellite orbits, station coordinates, the gravitational product GM, Earth Rotation Parameters (ERPs), temporal changes in the gravity field and enables the time transfer.

The activities of the IGG GNSS & Meteo group include in particular the improvement of the consistency of solutions based on optical (SLR) and microwave (GNSS) observations to the Earth’s artificial satellites and the troposhere delay modeling for SLR observations.

List of main topics:

multi-GNSS Orbit Validation Visualizer Using SLR (GOVUS)