_                   
                                                         |_|                  
      V   V   SSSS   OOO   PPPP                 \__      |_|      __/         
      V   V  S      O   O  P   P                   --____/ \____--            
      V   V   SSS   O   O  PPPP                    _ _ _ --- _ _ _            
       V V       S  O   O  P                      |_|_|_|  @|_|_|_|           
        V    SSSS    OOO   P                             o-o                  
                                                          /                   
      ***  N    E    W    S  ***                        <)                    

HALCA STATUS

HALCA successfully participated in several observations in December, and the detection of fringes at the correlator have confirmed HALCA is none the worse for its shutdown. (HALCA's previous observations was in early October before the loss of a reaction wheel forced observing to be halted.) Unfortunately, however, HALCA lost attitude control again in late December due to a discrepancy in the commanding sequence. The satellite is still in a free spin, with it's orientation being monitored during Kagoshima tracking station passes. Recovering the satellite can only be done if the thermal conditions of key components and the orientation of the satellite satisfy certain requirements, and recovery efforts to date have been frustrated by one or more of these conditions not being met. The next attempts to restabilize the satellite will be made in February, after the present series of eclipses has ended.

AO4 POSTPONEMENT

The third VSOP Announcement of Opportunity (AO3) marked a change of the VSOP proposal cycle to the trimester system used by ground VLBI arrays. The AO4 period would therefore nominally have a proposal deadline of 1 February. However, given the current HALCA status, it has been decided to postpone the AO4 period until after the satellite has been recovered and the three-reaction- wheel operating constraints have been clarified. Should the satellite be recovered and the new sun angle constraints be determined well before the June 1 ground-array proposal deadline -- as is hoped -- a call for target of opportunity proposals will be made if HALCA is constrained to a limited (but varying) area of the sky. More details will be given in future issues of the VSOP news as they become available. In the meantime, proposers are encouraged to keep VSOP in mind when considering future high resolution observations.

VSOP SYMPOSIUM

The first VSOP symposium will be held at ISAS next week. The program is being updated daily, and these revisions, along with the template for manuscripts for the proceedings and detailed instructions for participants on getting to ISAS, are available from /astro/halca/vsop/symposium.html.en.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

The big parties held around the world to mark the change from the 1900's to the 2000's were not seen in Japan, where the year changed from 11 to 12 (of the current Emperor's reign). This year is the year of the dragon, and we hope it is a prosperous year for readers of the VSOP news. We also hope HALCA's holiday does not "drag on" and that a return to observing will be possible in the near future!

                Editors: Phil Edwards and Hirax Hirabayashi