On November 8, in Yebes Observatory the new Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) station YLARA was inaugurated by the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda (Jesús Manuel Gómez García) together with the General Secretary of Research of the Ministry of Science and Innovation (Raquel Yotti Alvarez) and the Director of the IGN (Lorenzo García Asensio).
“This investment is key, for example, to monitor Earth parameters with applications to climate change, or to track space debris objects, which pose a serious problem for navigation in space,” explained the Undersecretary Jesús Gómez during the event.
The regular operation of the SLR station will begin shortly after overcoming the quarantine phase required by the International Laser Ranging Service (ILRS) to join the group of regular stations of this organization. This enormous achievement makes that the Yebes Observatory becomes one of the eight Fundamental Geodetic stations of the Global Geodetic Observation System (GGOS) that exist in the world, and the first of the RAEGE Network.