G
Geodesy

Mina Rahmani

Mina Rahmani is a researcher passionate about leveraging remote sensing observations to address environmental challenges in the field of geosciences. She received her Ph.D. in June 2025 from the University of Isfahan, Iran, where her research focused on the application of the GNSS-R technique. She is currently a research scientist at the University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy. Her research interests include geodesy, remote sensing and Earth observation, deep learning, and GNSS reflectometry. She holds both a B.Sc. (2017) and an M.Sc. (2019) in Surveying Engineering and Geodesy from the University of Isfahan. Her master’s thesis focused on the application of space geodesy techniques, including GPS, VLBI, and SLR, to monitor Earth’s shape deformation.

From Quasars to Coordinates: How VLBI Measures Earth’s Shape and Motion

June 26, 2026
From Quasars to Coordinates: How VLBI Measures Earth’s Shape and Motion
Figure courtesy: Öykü Koç

Imagine determining the position of a point on Earth with millimeter precision using radio signals from celestial objects billions of light-years away. This may sound like science fiction, but it is exactly what Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) allows scientists to do. What is VLBI? Long before satellites and digital maps, people looked to the sky and used celestial objects—most commonly t ...[Read More]