_                   
                                                         |_|                  
      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

A variety of conditions (battery levels, temperatures of key components, orientation of spin axes, length of tracking pass, etc) must be met in order to attempt recovery of attitude control. Unfortunately, not all these requirements were met on the days designated thus far for recovery attempts. In late April HALCA commenced a season of apogee eclipses, which will continue till May 25th. The regular eclipses result in the temperature of on-board equipment dropping appreciably, and so recovery cannot be attempted until the eclipse season ends. The longest eclipse, 88 minutes, took place on May 10th, and the eclipses get progressively shorter until May 25th.

NEW ISAS DIRECTOR-GENERAL

Prof. Matsuo resigned as ISAS Director-General in April to take up a position on the high-level national Space Development Committee. The new ISAS Director-General is Prof. Tsuruda, who took up the position on Thursday May 8th, just in time for...

MUSES-C LAUNCH

On Friday May 9th, the MUSES-C satellite, an ambitious asteroid sample-return mission, was successfully launched from the Kagoshima Space Centre on an ISAS M-V rocket. Following the successful launch the satellite was renamed "hayabusa", meaning falcon. It is hoped the "bird" will successfully find its target (in 2005), seize its "prey" (a sample from the asteroid surface) and return safely home (landing in Australia in 2007). VSOP Project Scientist, Prof. Hirabayashi, attended the launch with invited guests. One of the invited guests was JPL's Joel Smith, known to VSOP news readers as manager of the US Space-VLBI project and who is project manager for the US involvement in MUSES-C. The launch of MUSES-C was the first M-V launch for three years, following the unsuccessful launch of ASTRO-E in 2000. Hayabusa has been launched into a transfer orbit and will use an ion engine propulsion system for orbital maneuvers as it proceeds on its rendezvous path (via an Earth swingby next year) to the asteroid 1998SF36.

JUNK MAIL

The VSOP Science Operations Group (VSOG) e-mail account has been swamped with junk mail recently, and it is planned to change this address. (The VSOP web site administration account underwent a similar change several months back.) Details of the new account will be given in a later issue.

UPCOMING MEETINGS

The 25th IAU General Assembly will be held in Sydney from July 13th to 26th. A number of VSOP (and VSOP-2) related presentations will be given during the various symposia and joint discussions. See http://www.astronomy2003.com for more details. The early registration deadline has been extended May 31st.

                Editors: Phil Edwards and Hirax Hirabayashi