_                   
                                                         |_|                  
      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  ***                        <)                    

PUBLICATIONS OF THE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF JAPAN SPECIAL ISSUE

The special issue of PASJ to be devoted to VSOP-related papers, as outlined in previous issues, will be the final issue for this year, with a firm deadline for papers of the end of June (for templates and details, see http://www.asj.or.jp/pasj/en/index-E.html).

HALCA STATUS

HALCA status continues to be monitored during tracking passes once a week. Unfortunately all efforts to date to restart the reaction wheel thought to be responsible for the loss of attitude control in October 2003 have been unsuccessful.

VSOP-2 PROPOSAL

The ISAS call for mission proposals was released in March, with a deadline of the end of September. Missions intending to submit a proposal were required to submit a letter of intent, and this was done by the VSOP-2 team, the NeXT (X-ray) team, and the solar sail team. The call for proposals states that the mission design should assume a launch on an M-V rocket in the 2011 fiscal year (i.e. April 2011 to March 2012).

HALCA MOVIE

The VSOP video, described in the last issue, has been completed. Originally intended to be 25 minutes in length, the video ended up being 30 minutes in duration. The video, which was premiered after with two ISAS public lectures in Shinjuku on April 16th, is, naturally, in Japanese, although an English version is currently being considered. The video includes scenes and interviews filmed at JPL, Green Bank, JIVE and Westerbork, and we thank those involved for their cooperation. (Filming at Green Bank was described in an article in the latest NRAO news.)

VSOP TEAM

The Space VLBI group at Mitaka were boosted by the return to Japan late last year of Hagiwara-san after post-doc positions at MPIfR and ASTRON. One of Hagiwara-san's first tasks was to oversee the rewriting and updating of last year's VSOP-2 proposal -- a good way to get up-to-speed on the current status of mission planning. More recently, Ujihara-san has joined the Mitaka group, also as a post-doc. The ISAS VSOP team welcomed Dave Murphy back to Japan on a short-term JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) invitation fellowship. Dave spent a month at ISAS from mid-March, working on VSOP data analysis and interpretation, and also upgrading fakesat to VSOP-2 capability. And we congratulate Murata-san on his promotion to Associate Professor in the VSOP group at ISAS!

                Editors: Phil Edwards and Hirax Hirabayashi