The RAEGE station of Santa Maria is part of the RAEGE network (Atlantic Network of Geodynamic and Space Stations), a cooperation project established between the National Geographic Institute of Spain (IGN) and the Regional Government of the Azores. It is a unique project at a geodetic and geodynamic level, in which it is committed to the construction and operation of four Fundamental Geodetic Stations, namely: Yebes and Gran Canaria stations in Spain, Flores and Santa Maria stations in the Azores, Portugal. Santa Maria station has a radio telescope equipped with a triband receiver (S, X and Ka bands) and operates as a regular station within the IVS R1 and R4 sessions, since May 2021. For the past two years, the radio telescope infrastructure and signal chain underwent a series of maintenance procedures and improvements that are described in this contribution. Currently, the station has a team of ten people (and growing) distributed among IT, maintenance, administrative, science communication and R&D tasks. An overview of the state of the art of Santa Maria station and its plans, which includes the installation of a broadband VGOS receiver in the second half of 2022, are presented.
João Salmim Ferreira[1], Abel Garcíıa-Castellano[1,2], José A. López-Pérez[2], Mariana Moreira[1,3], Diogo Avelar[1,4], Valente Cuambe[1,3], Francisco Wallenstein[1], Javier González-García[2], Carlos Albo-Castáno[2]
Keywords RAEGE, VGOS, Azores, Yebes, core site
Type Proceeding
Event IVS General Assembly 2022 (28 March to 1 April 2022)
Journal reference: International VLBI Service for Geodesy and Astrometry General Meeting 2022 Proceedings, edited by Kyla L. Armstrong, Karen D. Baver, and Dirk Behrend NASA/CP-20220018789, 2023. pp. 42-46.
[1] Estação RAEGE de Santa Maria, Associação RAEGE Açores, Santa Maria – Azores, Portugal
[2] National Geographic Institute of Spain, Madrid, Spain
[3] Atlantic International Research Centre, Terceira – Azores, Portugal
[4] CoLAB +ATLANTIC – Cascais, Portugal
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