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MONTHLY NEWS April 1997 World's Most Powerful Radio Telescope Is Launched |
On February 12 the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science successfully launched an M-5 rocket from the Kagoshima Space Center in Uchinoura, Kagoshima Prefecture (map), to lift a radio telescope into orbit.
The satellite carrying the telescope was christened Haruka (Far Away) when it settled into an elliptical orbit eight minutes after launch. On February 28 it unfolded its massive parabolic antenna measuring nearly 8 meters (26 feet) in diameter. At its closest point Haruka will come within 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) of Earth, and at its farthest point it will be as far as 20,000 kilometers (12,430 miles) away. |
The radio telescope will link up with around 30 ground-based telescopes to create the world's first VLBI (very long baseline interferometer) that can measure the wavelengths of very faint light. The VLBI will be 1,000 times more powerful than the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope of the United States.
The new telescope is expected to zoom in on objects in deep space that are still shrouded in mystery, such as quasars and black holes. It will begin observation around September.
Photos: (top) Haruka unfurls its parabolic antenna in a laboratory prior to its launch. (above) An artist's conception of Haruka's orbit. (The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science) 
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