Welcome to the Space Geodesy Home Page

Welcome to the homepage for the Space Geodesy Group of the Radio and Geoastronomy Division located at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Space Geodesy Group engages in studies involving the application of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) and the Global Positioning System (GPS) to geodesy and geophysics.

Geodesy is the science of measurement of the size, shape, rotation, and gravitational field of the Earth. The Space Geodesy Group specializes in acquiring, analyzing, and interpreting space-based geodetic measurements. A variety of processes can influence geodetic measurements over a range of spatial and temporal scales, including:

• tides of the solid Earth and the oceans;
• weather and climate, and atmospheric structure and dynamics;
• hydrology and continental water storage;
• mass fluctuations and motions of glaciers and ice complexes;
• ocean and atmospheric circulation;
• changes in sea level;
• crustal motion associated with plate tectonics, earthquakes, and volcanos;
• postglacial rebound.

Group members also engage in the research and development of technology aimed at the improvement in accuracy of space geodetic systems and techniques.

The Space Geodesy Group has moved. New contact information can be found on the people page.