Space Very Long Baseline Interferometry Forum Held at ISSI-BJ 

Discussing the requirements to achieve a successful Space Very Long Baseline Interferometry (SVLBI) mission has been the main objective of the forum organized by the International Space Science Institute-Beijing (ISSI-BJ) on September 16-18, 2013. More than 50 scientists both from China and abroad (Australia, Europe, Japan, Korea, Russia, USA) attended this three-day forum. 

The meeting was convened by Leonid Gurvits, Joint Institute for VLBI (JIVE), Netherlands, HONG Xiaoyu, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO), CAS, and Kenneth Kellemann, National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), USA. 

China is currently planning a future SVLBI mission; its final proposal is expected to be submitted by the fall of 2015. Chinese scientists and engineers have been discussing the science goals of the mission and the design of the satellite for some time. Presentations were given on the complementary SVLBI missions such as VSOP or RadioAstron. Then, the Chinese proposal and the science goals were exposed and discussed as well as the possibility of international collaborations. The interaction between the scientists contributed to define more precisely the science objectives and the success criteria of the mission.

More information about the participants and the program can be found here and a detailed report will be published soon.