_          
                                             |_|         
 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  ***               <)               

UPCOMING MEETINGS

The XXIIIrd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union will be held in Kyoto from August 18--30 this year. A poster paper on the status and results of HALCA will be given as part of IAU Symposium 184 `The Central Regions of the Galaxy and Galaxies'. More details of the General Assembly are available from http://www.tenmon.or.jp/iau97/. Meetings of the VISC and GVWG will also be held during the two week period.

It is not too early to start planning for next year's COSPAR meeting! The 32nd COSPAR Scientific Assembly will be held in Nagoya from July 12--19, 1988. A 1.5 day session on `VSOP Results and the Future of Space VLBI' will is scheduled for Friday 17 and Saturday 18th.

WWW SITES

The VSOP WWW site has recently undergone a major (and overdue!) overhaul. References to the `upcoming launch' have been brought up to date, and a new style to the pages has been introduced. The WWW site will be a major source of information once General Observing Time observations start, and so comments on improving the content or appearance of the site are welcomed.

There is now an NRAO Space VLBI Project WWW site that deals with the space VLBI activities associated with the Array Operations Center in Socorro. The site can be accessed via a button on the NRAO home page, a link from the VSOP WWW site, or directly at http://www.nrao.edu/~julvesta/aoc_svlbi.html.

VSOP 2 WORKING GROUP

The formation of a Working Group to study the possibilities for a follow-up space VLBI mission to HALCA was proposed to, and approved by, the Science Advisory Committee of ISAS last week. If a successor to HALCA is accepted by the Science Advisory Committee, ISAS will then be responsible for finding the required funding and mission support. The launch of any follow-up mission would be no earlier than 2005.

TO RUSSIA WITH LOVE

The VSOP team bid a fond farewell to Misha Popov last week, as he returned to Moscow after a year at ISAS as a visiting Professor. Misha made wide-ranging contributions to the VSOP team, including studies of the radio frequency interference that HALCA would be expected to experience (and already has), the long term experiment scheduling philosophy, and boresighting and pointing calibration schemes and sources. The ladies in the ISAS cafeteria surprised both Misha and Jim Lovell (recently arrived from Tasmania) by claiming the two must be related. So although Misha-san has left, `Misha's son' is still here!

 
       Editors: Phil Edwards and Hirax Hirabayashi