_                   
                                                         |_|                  
      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 continues to be in good health. It has occasionally not been possible to use both star trackers simultaneously (due to the orientation of HALCA's orbit with respect to the Earth and Sun) but it is expected that this will have little impact on observations.

AO6

Preliminary grades from the Scientific Review Committee indicate that the quality of VSOP proposals is, if anything, increasing as time goes by! AO6 proposers will be contacted shortly with feedback on their proposals and with an indication of the likelihood of the observations being scheduled.

IMAGE REQUEST

Made a VSOP image recently? Then we would encourage you to make a color image available for inclusion in the VSOP image gallery, and for display at ISAS and NAO open days, etc. Please contact the VSOP news editors if you can help!

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

VLBA and HALCA observations have been recently published by Guirado et al. in Astronomy & Astrophysics, vol.371, p.766 (2001). Space-VLBI observations at 5 GHz of the quasar pair B1342+662 / B1342+663 were used to demonstrate the feasibility of phase-referencing techniques using an antenna in space. From residual (referenced) phases an upper bound of 10 meters to the uncertainty of the HALCA orbit reconstruction is derived. An analysis of the phase-referenced maps of the sources additionally suggests that the uncertainty is likely to be no larger than 3 meters. With errors of this magnitude, HALCA is a useful tool for astrometric studies of close pairs of radio sources.

REAL-TIME VLBI

The Communications Research Laboratory (CRL), National Astronomical Observatory (NAO), Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) have successfully achieved the first real-time VLBI observation with a sampling rate of 1Gbps. The experiment was carried out on June 23rd, using the Usuda 64m and Kashima 34m radio telescopes, giving a baseline of 208km. Data from observations of 3C273 were transmitted to the Kashima Space Research Center using NTT's ultra high- speed optical fiber research network, which is capable of speeds up to 2.4Gbps. More details are given at http://www.ntt.co.jp/news/news01e/0107/010706.html.

                Editors: Phil Edwards and Hirax Hirabayashi