Mar 1 1988
From The Space Library
NASA announced that an international team of researchers, coordinated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, was using satellites to study how the Earth's tectonic plates move in the Caribbean Sea and Central and South America. The experiment, spanning several years, would allow researchers to chart the motions of dozens of land sites in 16 countries using signals from orbiting navigation satellites. Research teams carried electronic receivers designed to pick up signals from seven NAVSTAR satellites operated by the U.S. Department of Defense, as part of the Global Positioning System (GPS) program. By locating receiver equipment at established survey markers in South America and the Caribbean, and collecting GPS data from up to four GPS satellites passing overhead, researchers calculated the location of receiving sites on the ground and are planned to compare measurements over time to determine tectonic displacement.
The plates studied included the Caribbean plate, in portions of the southern Caribbean Sea; the Cocos plate, in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Central America; the Nazca plate, off the west coast of South America; and the South American plate, upon which lies most of the South American continent. The research was funded by NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications, Earth Science and Applications Division. (NASA Release 88-30)
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