* Where is the station located? 

The new station will be located within the Vatican Gardens, inside the territory of the Vatican City State behind the St. Peter church, on the top of the historical building of the Government of the Vatican City State

    * Is the station currently operating, or planned? If planned, when is the projected date it will become operational? 

The new GNSS PS will become operational during fall 2007/winter 2007-2008

    * What agencies are responsible for installing, managing, operating, and maintaining the station? 

From the scientific side, the new GNSS PS will be installed and operated by the Vatican Observatory and the Chair of Surveying and Geomatics at the Faculty of Engineering of the "Sapienza" University of Rome; from the logistic site, the new GNSS PS will be installed, operated and mantained by the Technical Services of the Vatican Government

    * What is the expected operational lifetime of the station? How secure is the funding? 

The new GNSS PS is planned to be the official GNSS PS of the Vatican City State; in this sense both the lifetime and the funding is guaranteed for a long time

    * Will the station replace an existing IGS station? If so, what is the scheduled date of decommissioning? Does the new station offer more capability than the old one? 

The planned GNSS PS is totally new

    * Does/will the station meet all of the strictly required IGS site guidelines ( http://igscb.jpl.nasa.gov/network/guidelines/guidelines.html )? 

The new GNSS PS will be installed in such a way to meet all of the strict requirements listed into the IGS site guidelines

    * What is the data delivery schedule? 

Data will be delivered at least on daily and hourly basis for post-processing purposes; in addition, data for real-time positioning (DGPS and RTK) will be delivered

    * Can you set the receiver for "all in view" tracking (including tracking of satellites set unhealthy)? 

We are supposed to do so, since we plan to install a LEICA GRX1200GGPRO receiver with a LEIAT504GG LEIS antenna

    * Are there currently operating IGS stations within 1000km? Approximately how many? Does this site offer any capabilities the others do not? 

Yes, there are the other PS IN Italy (BZRG, IENG, GENO, PADO, UNFE, MEDI, MAT1, CAGZ, NOT1) and in surrounding countries (AJAC, GRAS, ZIMJ, HFKL, GRAZ, OSJE, DUBR, ORID), but there is an evident “hole” in Central Italy which could be “patched” by the new GNSS PS. Moreover, only few PS have GLONASS capability (in Italy: MAT1, CAGZ, UNFE; outside Italy: ZIMJ, OSJE, DUBR), and, again, the new GNSS PS should be barycentric w.r.t. the Italian peninsula.

Finally, the real-time capability could be of value for the coming Real-time Pilot Project, expected to begin in the October 2007.

    * What IGS product or project will this site benefit, based on its location, instrumentation, and latency? 

As mentioned before, the new GNSS PS could contribute to GLONASS tracking network and to the Real-time Pilot Project

    * Is this station intended to tie a national datum to the ITRF? 

Yes, it will tie the Vatican City State datum and the Italian datum to the ITRF

    * Is there a web page associated with this site (please specify)? If not, please include a site photo or two with this application. 

A web page for the new GNSS PS is planned.

    * Is data available on a public server (please specify)? 

We plan to deliver data through the Italian Spage Agency Geodetic Data Archiving Facility

server ( http://geodaf.mt.asi.it/), as already done for our M0SE GNSS PS

    * Please complete and include a draft site log ( http://igscb.jpl.nasa.gov/igscb/station/general/blank.log) according to the instructions ( http://igscb.jpl.nasa.gov/igscb/station/general/sitelog_instr.txt ). 

The attached site log is a quite rough one; it mainly contains:

    * the proposed name: “Vatican City State - Rome”
    * the proposed four character identifier: “SCV1”, which is presently available at the site http://sopac.ucsd.edu/scripts/checkSiteID.cgi . 

    (If possible, we would like to reserve also the four character identifier “SCV2” (available too), since in the next future it will be installed a second GNSS PS within the Vatican territory at the Papal Summer Residence in Castelgandolfo (Rome district), where is located the headquarter of the Vatican Observatory) 

    * the proposed primary and secondary IGS Data Centers: “ASI” and “BKG”