Lageos scientific results - Introduction

It is pointed out that the Laser Geodynamics Satellites (Lageos) is one of the first artificial satellites developed exclusively for geodynamic measurements using laser-ranging techniques. Lageos was launched by NASA on May 4, 1976. The satellite is a sphere, 60 cm in diameter. When Lageos was first launched, the laser tracking systems and data analysis techniques permitted the derivation of station coordinates at about the meter level of precision. By employing special techniques for removing biases, the uncertainty in baseline distance changes could be reduced to better than a decimeter and in some cases to a few centimeters. A summary of technical papers concerned with the utilization of Lageos data is presented.