Feb 7 1997
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
NASA announced that it would join an international consortium of space agencies to support the launch of a Japanese satellite designed to create the largest astronomical instrument ever. The launch of the Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) Space Observatory would create a radio telescope more than twice the diameter of the Earth, giving astronomers their sharpest view yet of the universe. Astronomers praised the Japanese-led launch as a significant advance for space research. VLBI satellites would allow radio astronomers to link together widely separated radio telescopes, so that they would function as a single instrument with extraordinarily sharp resolving power. The farther apart the telescopes, the greater would be the image's resolution. NASA equated the power of the new tool with the ability to see a grain of rice in Tokyo from Los Angeles. Scientists hoped that the new tool would allow for further exploration of active galaxies with massive black holes. Researchers also hoped that the instrument would foster understanding of the mysterious quasars, which pour out tremendous amounts of energy and host or create black holes. Creating the enormous VLBI network involved 40 radio telescopes from 15 nations. Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science led the international consortium of science agencies, including NASA's JPL, the U.S. National Science Foundation's National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the Canadian Space Agency, the Australia Telescope National Facility, the European VLBI Network, and Europe's Joint Institute for VLBI.
U.S. astronaut Jerry M. Linenger, NASA's temporary resident aboard Russia's Mir space station, became the second American to ride aboard the three-person Soyuz capsule that had delivered the cosmonauts to Mir. Cosmonauts Valery G. Korzun and Alexander Y. Kaleri, Linenger's Russian partners aboard Mir, took Linenger for a short ride around Mir, to free a docking station for the new Soyuz vehicle that Russia would soon launch. In allowing an American astronaut aboard the Russian craft, Russia took another step with the United States to foster a cooperative postcommunist relationship between the two countries.
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