VGOS: The Becoming of an Operational System

Abstract

American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting (AGU2024), What's Next for Science, 9-13 December 2024, Washington, D.C.The S/X VLBI network has been the production system of the IVS since the Service's inception in 1999. In 2020, after a visionary journey from designing to prototyping to system rollout, the next-generation, broadband VLBI system called VGOS (VLBI Global Observing System) was declared operational and a (geographically) limited VGOS network of some eight (northern-hemisphere) stations started to contribute operationally to IVS products. That VGOS network has increased to currently 14 more globally-distributed stations, and it continues to grow with further seven stations expected to join between years 2024 and 2025. The current operational VGOS observing program includes two 24-hour session series (known as VGOS-OPS and VGOS-RD) for EOP determination and a 1-hour (Intensive), weekdaily series (VGOS-INT-A) for dUT1 determination. Further VGOS Intensive series are being validated. Beyond the network buildout activities, also other infrastructure components of the VLBI processing chain have been developed further (e.g., VGOS correlation and post-processing, VGOS analysis). In this presentation, we provide a status overview of the infrastructure realization of VGOS, outline current limitations and risks, and give an outlook as to the future prospects of VGOSPeer reviewe