_                    
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      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  ***                        <)                     
 

KEY SCIENCE PROGRAMS

Earlier this week PIs (or their designated contact persons) were notified that experiments from their proposals would be included in the KSPs. Forty-seven proposals had at least one experiment selected for one of the six KSP areas: Blazars, High Brightness Temperature/Intra-Day Variability, Jet Motions (3C 273, 3C 279 and 3C 345), Key Sources (NGC 4258, Centaurus A and Virgo A), Maser Spots, and Mega-Masers.

RESULTS OF VSOP PROPOSAL REVIEW

The PIs (or contact people) of all proposals submitted in response to the first VSOP Announcement of Opportunity will be notified of the results of the proposal review by mid-May (a slight delay from previous estimates).

TECHNICAL REVIEW OF PROPOSALS

A technical evaluation of all proposals was carried out by the Technical Review Committee (TRC) in order to provide advice to the SRC on the feasibility of proposed experiments. Several areas of technical concern were identified by the TRC:

(i) Polarization observations: The AO and Proposer's Guide clearly state the difficulties associated with polarization observations. Despite this, 24 proposals that requested polarization observations were submitted. Significant technical problems will need to be overcome before polarization observations can be undertaken successfully. Therefore the SRC recommended setting up a Polarization Study Team to investigate the feasibility of polarization observations. No scientific polarization proposals will be scheduled before this team has determined whether such observations are indeed feasible. The team will be comprised of PIs recommended by the SRC and mission personnel.

(ii) Orbit Determination: Many maser proposals requested a 10m orbit accuracy so that adequate delay calibration could be achieved. Careful processing of the Ku-band Doppler data from the tracking stations should make it possible to reduce the orbit error to about 10-20 m, thus enabling many maser experiments.

(iii) Use of resources: The number of orbits preferred and ground radio telescopes requested by proposers exceeded availability by factors of more than four to one. Many proposals requested very large ground arrays, often with little justification. An examination of many proposals showed that 1-2 orbit observations with modest ground arrays (e.g., the VLBA) could provide adequate uv-coverage since in many cases the image quality will be limited by uv-holes that cannot be filled-in no matter how many ground telescopes observe. Consequently the SRC reduced the number of orbits and the size of ground arrays for many experiments. The TRC validated the SRC's actions with only slight modifications. This reduction in resource utilization by many experiments will enable a more diverse scientific program to be undertaken.

NOTE: Information related to the VSOP proposal review will also appear in the JPL Space VLBI newsletter to ensure it reaches as wide an audience as possible.

 
 
       Editors: Phil Edwards and Hirax Hirabayashi