Geodesy at the top of the world

In April, ambassador Peter Thomson, UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean and UN-GGIM Global Geodesy Ambassador, visited Norway’s geodetic Earth observatory at 79 degrees North. “Geodesy is the fundamental that we build everything on”, Thomson said.

Norway’s and the Norwegian Mapping Authority’s new geodetic Earth observatory in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, ranks as the northernmost facility of its kind and forms part of a global network for observation and research.

The observatory combines several geodetic measuring techniques – and in April NASA started the installation of the station’s satellite laser ranging (SLR) instrument.

SLR is a geodetic instrument which helps us know the precise position of satellites and makes it possible to measure sea level rise to a small fraction of an inch.

See the video from Ny-Ålesund and the ambassador’s visit to the northernmost geodetic Earth observatory:

Geodesy at the top of the world on Vimeo