Status and future of the cooperative San Juan SLR station

RICARDO PODESTA; LIU WEIDONG; ELOY ACTIS; YANBEN HAN; LIMIN ZHAO; ANA MARIA PACHECO; T. WANG ; ESTER ALONSO; D. HUANG ; YIN ZHIQIANG; J. ALACORIA; LEANDRO PEÑALOZA; DIEGO BRIZUELA; MATÍAS FLORES; MAURICIO MORALES; RODOLFO CARRIZO; JESICA NIEVAS

Rio de Janeiro

Congreso; Asamblea General XXVII de la Union Astronomica Internacional; 2009

La Sociedad Astronómica de Brasil

Several years ago a new cooperative SLR station was set up in San Juan by Felix Aguilar Astronomical Observatory (OAFA) of San Juan National University of Argentina and National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC). An SLR System with a Cassegrain 60 cm of a diameter of primary mirror telescope was designed and made in China. Meanwhile, OAFA built the observation room in San Juan. At the end of 2005, the SLR was moved to San Juan and installed in OAFA headquarters. The debugging of the system was completed in February 2006 and the SLR started tracking satellites. The rich observations were obtained due to the serious work and elaborated maintenance for the instruments by the technicians of both sides, as well as the excellent weather conditions usually prevailing in San Juan área. The SLR Global Performance Report of ILRS shows that this SLR (7406) is among the top three SLR Systems in their whole network. This SLR is significant forimproving the distribution of SLR stations, enhancing the orbital coverage of the whole earth and continued evolution of the ITRF. We will renovate relevant hardware and software for daytime tracking with a high repetition rate.Since mid-2006, 14 Laser Stations (San Juan Station among them) took part in a follow-up campaign of Giove-A satellite of the European Space Agency ESA. The knowledge of the satellite orbital behavior, let Giove-B orbiter be launched in April of 2008 and a constellation of 30 satellites will be completed so that the new Galileo System becomes operative.As Giove-A is very high (23916 kilometers) only the shots from the best SLR World Stations can reach it. San Juan has contributed to the study of its movement by means of all along with the journey observations, and the sending of the collected data to Europe, as well. Even being a very young Station, San Juan Satellite Laser Ranging Telescope has become one of the best in the World, the fruit of the successful Chinese - Argentinean joint work that has been carried out at our University for over a decadeILRS World Net by now.