Calculating minds

ESA's Navigation Facility, located at ESOC, Darmstadt, calculates and predicts highly accurate GPS, Galileo and GLONASS (Russian GPS) satellite orbits, in near-real time, every six hours, around the clock. These data are then used to improve GPS position accuracy, paving the way to even more sophisticated applications and scientific studies, such as large-scale climate monitoring and tracking of long-term changes in Earth’s geology.