HartRAO 2016 Review of South African Space Geodesy Programme

This report discusses the outcome of a review conducted by the NRF into the space
geodesy programme of HartRAO. The review panel conducted extensive consultations with national and international experts and users to arrive at the findings. Space geodesy, as a subset of geodesy, uses different space geodetic techniques, primarily to determine terrestrial reference frames, earth rotation parameters, earth’s gravitational field and the measurement of geodynamical phenomena, and how these are changing with time.
The findings of the review panel deal with the importance of the space geodesy
programme, the infrastructure at HartRAO, the quality of the programme, and
operational and management issues. The findings show overwhelming support for the continuation of the space geodesy programme and in particular the HartRAO station as a geodetic core station of national, regional and international importance. The findings also show the outstanding work that HartRAO is doing in human capacity development. There are some areas of concern, but these are mostly the result of the space geodesy programme being under-resourced.