WEBVTT

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My name is Chopo Ma. My primary job these days seems to be in charge of NASA's geodetic VLBI program.

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When NASA started in this area of space geodesy using VLBI, there were different questions that were really interesting to answer.

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For example, whether plates like the North American plate and Europe, the continents were actually moving.

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The questions now are fundamental metrics, so that from the space geodesy measurements we can develop a very precise terrestrial reference frame.

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The ability to know on the Earth, from one place to another and from one time to another, how things are related: up, down, east, west, north, south.

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And this is very important for measurements which are small in nature but take some time to measure properly,

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like what happens with sea level rise, and whether it's uniform over the whole globe or not.

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VLBI and the other techniques are working to make improvements to make these types of fundamental measurements,

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to allow other science to be done more accurately and to make the interpretation more secure.