_                   
                                                         |_|                  
      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

VSOP Survey Program observations recommenced last month, with observations initially scheduled at a rate of about one a week. HALCA has experienced some minor problems with the 15 GHz two-way link antenna pointing system, but these have not unduly affected observations.

CSA SUPPORT

Canadian Space Agency (CSA) support for the correlation of VSOP observations at the Canadian S2 Space-VLBI Correlation Centre at DRAO in Penticton ended on August 30th. The last correlator output from S2-format VSOP mission data were generated on Friday August 29th as part of the key science project w029a3. Since the first fringes in 1997, a total of 353 S2-format VSOP observations have been correlated at Penticton. Of these, 192 were VSOP Survey, 145 General Observing Time and 16 Test observations. The mission would like to thank all the Correlation Centre staff in Penticton for their efforts: Sean Dougherty, Rob Shanks, Amy Fink, Dave Del Rizzo, Kevin Douglas, Brent Carlson, Bill Petrachenko and Peter Dewdney. CSA is also thanked for its support of the S2 correlator development and operation over the past 14 years, in particular over the last 18 months that permitted correlation of all the VSOP Survey observations allocated to Penticton. CSA continues to support the University of Calgary Radio Astronomy Laboratory for the reduction and analysis of VSOP Survey data by Bill Scott.

ISAS AND JAXA

With the creation of JAXA on October 1st, all ISAS e-mail addresses will change. However, it was recently decided that the name "ISAS" will be retained, with most of the current ISAS belonging to the new section (one of four within JAXA) bearing that name. As a result, in many cases, the "isas.ac.jp" portion of the address will simply change to "isas.jaxa.jp". The VSOP web pages will undergo a similar change. Full details will be given next issue, however, the current "isas.ac.jp" addresses are expected to continue to work for the next six months or so.

VSOP STAFF

The VSOP team at ISAS has a new member, with the arrival of Kaj Wiik earlier this month. Kaj has taken up a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) post-doctoral fellowship, for 12 months in the first instance. Kaj received a warm welcome, with summer belatedly making an appearance in Japan. However, as Finland, like much of the rest of Europe, experienced very high temperatures last month, Kaj was somewhat acclimatised to the heat, if not the accompanying humidity. One of the papers Kaj had contributed to as part of his Ph D work (A&A 394, 851 [2002]), concluded "This type of study would benefit greatly from future space interferometry missions such as the proposed VSOP-2 and iARISE missions." It is not surprising then, that part of Kaj's work at ISAS will be contributing to the formal VSOP-2 proposal as it is readied for submission over the coming months.

                Editors: Phil Edwards and Hirax Hirabayashi