The minister approved the plan and appropriated the necessary means, the academy designating Charles Marie de La Condamine, Pierre Bouguer, and Godin to go to Peru in 1734.

The expedition sailed from La Rochelle on 16 May 1735, touched at Cadiz to take two naval lieutenants, Jorge Juan y Santacilia and Antonio de Ulloa,[2] whom Philip V had ordered to accompany it, and proceeded to Santo Domingo, where they remained six months to take observations.

When they had finished their task in 1738, at the invitation of the Viceroy of Peru, Godin accepted the professorship in mathematics in Lima, where he also established a course of astronomical lectures.

When the 1746 Lima–Callao earthquake destroyed the greater part of Lima, he took valuable seismological observations, assisted the sufferers, and made plans by the use of which the new buildings would be less exposed to danger from renewed shocks.

In 1751 he returned to Europe, but found that he had been nearly forgotten, and superseded as pensioner of the academy; and, as his fortune had been lost in unfortunate speculations, he accepted the presidency of the college for midshipmen in Cádiz in Spain in 1752.