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Ratcliff, J.T.

Publications and source records attributed to Ratcliff, J.T..

Combinations of Earth orientation measurements: SPACE2014, COMB2014, and POLE2014

Independent Earth orientation measurements taken by the space-geodetic techniques of lunar and satellite laser ranging, very long baseline interferometry, and the Global Positioning System have been combined using a Kalman filter. The resulting combined Earth orientation series, SPACE2014, consists of values and uncertainties for Universal Time, polar motion, and their rates that span from September 28, 1976, to April 14, 2015, at daily intervals and is available in versions with epochs given at either midnight or noon. The space-geodetic measurements used to generate SPACE2014 have then been combined with optical astrometric measurements to form two additional combined Earth orientation series: (1) COMB2014, consisting of values and uncertainties for Universal Time, polar motion, and their rates that span from January 20, 1962, to April 14, 2015, at daily intervals and which are also available in versions with epochs given at either midnight or noon; and (2) POLE2014, consisting of values and uncertainties for polar motion and its rate that span from January 20, 1900, to March 23, 2015, at 30.4375-day intervals.

Gross, R.S.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Analyses of laser ranges to the Moon are utilized for a broad range of investigations: lunar science, gravitational physics, geodesy, geodynamics and astronomy. Unique contributions from LLR include: detection of a molten lunar core; measurement of tidal dissipation in the Moon; an accurate test of the principle of equivalence for massive bodies (strong equivalence principle); and detection of lunar free librations. LLR analysis has provided tests of relativity, measurements of the Moon's tidal acceleration and the Earth s precession, and has provided orders-of-magnitude improvements in the accuracies of the lunar ephemeris and three-dimensional rotation. JPL has been active in all of these various LLR applications and supplies lunar and planetary ephemerides and lunar physical librations to the community.

Williams, Jim