Geodetic analysis of K-band VLBI observations until 2024.0

We perform a geodetic analysis of K-band (24 GHz) VLBI sessions from May 2002 until September 2023. For this study, we run a global solution by adjusting the time independent parameters from the K-band and S/X sessions (1979.5–2024.0) through a single inversion of all observations. Therefore, we are able to provide the positions of the non-geodetic antennas KVNUS, KVNYS and Mopra for the reference epoch 2015.0 with their linear velocity, which are aligned to the ITRF2020. Formal errors of the position component estimates are below 0.8 cm for the KVN antennas and about 2 cm for Mopra. The components of station linear velocity were estimated with formal errors 0.1 mm/y for KVN antennas and lower than 0.5 mm/y for Mopra. Furthermore, we focus on the potential of the K-band VLBA network for Earth orientation monitoring. We present the accuracy of the Earth orientation parameters computed from the K-band sessions with respect to the a priori IERS values and compare them with the accuracy obtained from the traditional S/X observations.