_                   
                                                         |_|                  
      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 monitored during daily tracking passes. Attitude control will be recovered using the Reaction Wheels (RWs), and earlier this month tests were carried out to determine whether it would be possible to use all four RWs, which would place less constraints on the conditions in which recovery could be attempted. (After the malfunction of one RW in October 1999 HALCA has been using only three RWs.) The tests revealed that the fourth RW would not work, and so recovery will be attempted (as it was in February 2000) with three RWs. The magnetic torquers are now being used to slow down the free spin, or tumbling, motion of the satellite in order to make it easier for the RWs to regain stabilization. It is presently thought that it may be possible to recover the satellite in mid-April.

IMAGE REQUEST

A major overhaul of the VSOP Image Gallery is planned for the near future. It is hoped that the Gallery can be at least tripled from the two dozen images currently on display. Requests for the use of images in the gallery are regularly received, ranging from high school students to journalists to radio astronomers, and in the lead up to the formal submission of the VSOP-2 proposal there are of course good political reasons for ensuring the achievements of VSOP are widely appreciated. Please contact the VSOP news editors if you can provide an image (or images!) with a short description.

VSOP STAFF

Prof. Haruto Hirosawa will retire from ISAS at the end of this month. VSOP Project Manager from the beginning of the mission, Hirosawa-san oversaw the design, development, construction, and testing of the MUSES-B satellite, its launch and renaming as HALCA, and the successful combination with other mission elements to form the first dedicated space VLBI mission. The VSOP team expresses its gratitude to Hirosawa-san for his guidance and wisdom and wishes him all the best for the future.

Satoko Sawada-Satoh, who joined the VSOP team at ISAS in January 2001, is leaving at the end of this month to take up a post-doctoral position at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan. In addition to regular shifts for HALCA scheduling and HALCA operations, Sawada-Satoh-san has undertaken much of the ground-work for the establishment of the VSOP data archive at ISAS.

UPCOMING MEETINGS

"Future Directions in High Resolution Astronomy: A Celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the VLBA" will be held from June 8th to 12th, 2003 at Socorro, New Mexico. See http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/events/VLBA10th/ for more details. "Radio Astronomy at 70: from Karl Jansky to microjansky" will be held as part of the JENAM-2003 Symposium in Budapest, Hungary, from August 27th to 30th. For further information see http://www.konkoly.hu/jenam03/ .

                Editors: Phil Edwards and Hirax Hirabayashi