NOTE TO EDITORS David E. Steitz Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif. December 2, 2003 NASA Contributes To Earthquake
Research Ten years ago next month, Southern California was
rocked by the deadly magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake, one of
the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history. The quake was
preceded by concentrated pre-earthquake strain in the region,
detected by sparse readings from newly developed Global
Positioning System (GPS) deformation monitors. NASA's unique
contributions to this rapidly maturing field of study and
implications of this research for mitigating future seismic
hazards are the focus of a Earth Science Update, Thursday, 1
p.m. EST in NASA's Webb Auditorium, 300 E Street S.W.,
Washington. In the 10 years since the devastating Northridge
earthquake, a high tech GPS based ground deformation network was
installed within Southern California. It provides a continuous
measurement of ground deformation at 250 locations with a
precision of a few millimeters. Advances in satellite