ASTRO-G
Encyclopedia
Astro-G is a planned radio telescope
satellite
under development by JAXA. It is expected to be launched into elliptic orbit around Earth (apogee height 25,000 km, perigee height 1,000 km). Astro-G was selected in February 2006 against the competition of a proposed new X-Ray astronomy mission (NeXT) and a proposed solar sail mission to Jupiter. Funding started from FY 2007 with a budget of 12 billion yen, around 100 million US dollars.
Featuring a 9 m diameter dish antenna to observe in 8, 22 and 43 GHz bands, it will be used in a combination of ground radio telescopes to create Very Long Baseline Interferometry
. It is expected to achieve ten times higher resolution and ten times higher sensitivity than its predecessor HALCA
.
It was planned to be launched in 2012 but a technical difficulty of dish antenna as well as the budget constraint lead to put the development on hold for fiscal year 2010, and the launch is to be delayed no earlier than 2013.
Other science targets:
Radio telescope
A radio telescope is a form of directional radio antenna used in radio astronomy. The same types of antennas are also used in tracking and collecting data from satellites and space probes...
satellite
Satellite
In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....
under development by JAXA. It is expected to be launched into elliptic orbit around Earth (apogee height 25,000 km, perigee height 1,000 km). Astro-G was selected in February 2006 against the competition of a proposed new X-Ray astronomy mission (NeXT) and a proposed solar sail mission to Jupiter. Funding started from FY 2007 with a budget of 12 billion yen, around 100 million US dollars.
Featuring a 9 m diameter dish antenna to observe in 8, 22 and 43 GHz bands, it will be used in a combination of ground radio telescopes to create Very Long Baseline Interferometry
Very Long Baseline Interferometry
Very Long Baseline Interferometry is a type of astronomical interferometry used in radio astronomy. It allows observations of an object that are made simultaneously by many telescopes to be combined, emulating a telescope with a size equal to the maximum separation between the telescopes.Data...
. It is expected to achieve ten times higher resolution and ten times higher sensitivity than its predecessor HALCA
HALCA
The HALCA , also known for its project name VSOP , or the code name MUSES-B for the second of the Mu Space Engineering Spacecraft series, is a Japanese 8 meter diameter radio telescope satellite which was used for Very Long Baseline Interferometry...
.
It was planned to be launched in 2012 but a technical difficulty of dish antenna as well as the budget constraint lead to put the development on hold for fiscal year 2010, and the launch is to be delayed no earlier than 2013.
Science targets
Key science :- Jet structure, collimation and acceleration regions
- Structure of accretion disks around AGN
- Structure of magnetic fields in protostars
Other science targets:
- Galactic masers in star-forming region
- Extragalactic Megamasers
- Radio quiet quasars
- X-ray binaries, SNR, gravitational lenses etc.
External links
- VSOP-2 Project - National Astronomical Observatory of JapanNational Astronomical Observatory of JapanThe is an astronomical research organisation comprising several facilities in Japan, as well as an observatory in Hawaii. It was established in 1988 as an amalgamation of three existing research organizations - the Tokyo Astronomical Observatory of the University of Tokyo, International Latitude...
- http://www.vsop.isas.jaxa.jp/vsop2/