Highly Advanced Laboratory for Communications and Astronomy
| HALCA | |
|---|---|
| Country: |
 Japan
|
| Operator: | ISAS |
| COSPAR-ID : | 1997-005A |
| Mission dates | |
| Begin: | February 12, 1997, 04:50 UTC |
| Starting place: | Kagoshima |
| Launcher: | MV -1 |
| Status: | out of service since November 30, 2005 |
| Orbit data | |
| Rotation time : | 380 min |
| Orbit inclination : | 31.3 ° |
| Apogee height : | 21400 km |
| Perigee height : | 560 km |
HALCA ( Japanese は る か , Haruka , German "far away"; formerly MUSES-B ) is the abbreviation for Highly Advanced Laboratory for Communications and Astronomy and is a Japanese satellite of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science for VLBI observations. The satellite was on 12 February 1997 with an MV - rocket from the Kagoshima Space Center in an elliptical orbit started. The inclination of the orbit is 31.3 °, the height of the perigee 560 km and that of the apogee 21,400 km.
HALCA has a radio telescope with an effective diameter of 8 m. It does not have a rigid structure because it would be too big to be launched by the launcher. Instead, a network of gold-coated molybdenum wire is used, which is supported by 6 masts that were only unfolded after the start.
The mission ended in November 2005. The ASTRO-G telescope was planned as a successor . However, the project was discontinued in 2011 because the necessary accuracy of the antenna could not be achieved within a realistic time and budget.
Individual evidence
- ↑ HALCA in the NSSDCA Master Catalog , accessed on October 2, 2012 (English).
- ↑ ASTRO-G. (No longer available online.) ISAS, archived from the original on September 17, 2015 ; accessed on October 2, 2012 .
Web links
- ISAS / JAXA: HALCA (MUSES-B) ( Memento from October 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
- Haruka in the Encyclopedia Astronautica (English)