Science Minister Visits Geomatics Researchers at University of New Brunswick
The federal Minister of State for Science and Technology, Ed Holder, visited the University of New Brunswick on 28 July to announce the awarding by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of $2.4 million to 28 UNB researchers.
He was joined by Keith Ashfield, member of Parliament for Fredericton and Craig Leonard, the New Brunswick Minister of Energy and Mines.
A highlight of the visit was a tour of the Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering to see the work of Prof. Richard Langley and his students. Prof. Langley received NSERC funding in the latest competition to support the work of his group in improving augmented multi-constellation satellite-based precise positioning in a wide range of environments.
Although GPS was the first widely available satellite navigation system, it has now been joined by the Russian GLONASS system, and will soon be accompanied by the European Galileo system, the Chinese BeiDou system, and the Japanese QZSS-all of which have test satellites now in orbit. There are a number of interesting problems to be solved in gaining maximum benefits from this plethora of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) for precise positioning and navigation, and Prof. Langley and his team will address a number of them.
The team is also involved in the analysis of data from the GPS-based instrument on the Canadian CASSIOPE scientific satellite launched at the end of September 2013. The instrument, which precisely determines the position of the satellite and provides information on the state of the Earth’s ionosphere, was designed at UNB.
