HALCA

HALCA (JapaneseはるかHaruka, dt " far away "; formerly MUSES -B ) is the acronym 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 launched on 12 February 1997 with an MV rocket from the Kagoshima Space Center in an elliptical orbit. The inclination of the orbit is 31.3 °, the height of perigee 560 km and apogee of 21400 km.

HALCA has a radio telescope with an effective diameter of 8 m. It has no rigid structure, because this would be too large to be launched with the launch vehicle. Instead, a network of gold-plated molybdenum wire is used, which is supported by masts 6, which are expanded after the start.

The mission ended in November 2005. As the successor to the telescope ASTRO -G was planned. The project was set in 2011 but because the required accuracy of the antenna was not reachable within a realistic time frame and budget.