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There are and will be quite a bit more "telescopes" out there, where I've used the term as loosely as the original poster, i.e. including imaging by other means than actual focussing. Some examples include the Japanese Suzaku mission; ESA's Integral or the small gamma-ray observatory AGILE. Further interesting developments in infrared astronomy are the soon-to-be-launched Herschel mission - the largest mirror before the launch of JWST - and the Japanese-led SPICA observatory.

This is known as VLBI, and it's been done since the 1960's. During the mission of the Japanese VSOP satellite, we had telescopes bigger than the Earth.

What is new here is the real time data transport, not the observations.

Actually, the solar observing projects haven't (yet) been cut completely--

STEREO is set to launch this year (but no one knows when, due to problems with a battery used in the system to destruct the third stage of the rocket in case something goes wrong)

SOLAR-B is set to launch this year as well (it's a joint JAXA project, though)

SDO should be on track as well

That's not to say that these projects aren't hitting financial problems -- STEREO's delay is a problem, as it costs more to keep the spacecraft in storage on the ground than it does to track them in space.

Quick list, by no means meant to be complete, just to give an impression of the differences between the missions:

Beagle 2: Lander, search for signs of past or present life on the planet surface
Mars Express: Orbiter, study atmosphere and surface with radar and spectrometers
Mars Rovers: 2 Landers, search for signs of past or present water (NASA's Follow The Water strategy)
Nozomi: Orbiter, study atmoshpere and interaction with solar wind. Mission failed.

The Japanese probe you refer to used a slingshot technique several times, but it had absolutely nothing to do with a cable. As pointed out before, a sling is not a slingshot.

In addition to these missions, also keep an eye on the NASA/ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan, arriving later this year, as well as ESA's SMART-1 mission to the moon to be launched soon. Future plans include NASA's Mercury Messenger, and ESA's Venus Express and Bepi-Columbo.

Japan just launched a space probe for a sample return mission from an asteroid. Here is a home page for the mission (but rather outdated). Apparently, it also uses electric propulsion.

The SXI data has been available for weeks. It replaces x-ray images which were on the Internet for years from the Yohkoh satellite until it saw one too many eclipses and spun out of control in Dec. 2001. Other near-real-time (or at least daily) images of the sun can be found in numerous places: SOHO and SXI are not the only sources. And there already are predictions of solar events.

The SXI data has been available for weeks. It replaces x-ray images which were on the Internet for years from the Yohkoh satellite until it saw one too many eclipses and spun out of control in Dec. 2001. Other near-real-time (or at least daily) images of the sun can be found in numerous places: SOHO and SXI are not the only sources. And there already are predictions of solar events.

Since when have CCDs bled "in two perpendicular directions"? If I posted enough links of CCDs bleeding in only one dimension, would you eat a crow? From one of my favorite satellites, Yohkoh. From a random web page. A great shot of the infamous UFOs from SOHO. And finally, from the Hubble website itself, a great example of CCD bleed and diffraction spikes in the same photo! The CCD bleed is the bar, and the diffraction spikes are the crosshairs. Check your facts before you post.

Show them the moon lander through a telescope, they say the telescope has been tampered with.

Thats the whole point of these debunking missions you can't see the lander on the moons surface or the rovers, even with modern telescopes the size relationship between the lander and any earth based telescope is just too small its like looking for a grain of sand from 100,000 miles away.

I believe Japan is launching a mission in 2003 to photograph the moon (called LUNAR-A) from a hi resolution camera on a low orbit satellite , also a californian company is doing the same with a mission called Trailblazer which also should prove/disprove that mankind was indeed on the moon.
In order to see if someone is lying you cannot ask the said lier to show evidence especially if fabrication of evidence was an issue in the first place , that is why its probably a better idea for a independant non connected 3rd party to verify the accused lier's claims.

Of course this still probably wont be enough for the hoax/conspiracy believers as they will say NASA skewed the results or "tainted" the 3rd party.

You must remember, we live in an age of liers and fraudsters and no one is untouchable even a established science agency such as NASA or members of the American goverment, after all no one thought Enron or AC would be one of the biggest frauds in history so it is somewhat understandable that people don't believe everything they see

But for the "ignorant" masses an independant investigation will go a long way to dispell any doubts, especially from one by a country independant from that of the said "fraudsters", plus with any luck they might be able to complete some worthy science along the way.

By linking multiple observatories, you can do neat tricks like interferometry. One advantage you get is that your effective mirror/antenna size becomes considerably larger than the little mirrors/antennae that make up the array -- it's a function of how far apart the antennae are rather than the size of the individual elements, which is why a few hundred yards of separation can make a huge difference. The VLT uses this idea, as does the VLBI. Holograms are related in the sense that they exploit phase information of light just as interferometers do.

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Hiten (a.k.a. Muses-A)
Lunar Orbiter and Lander
Launch Period: 1980
Agency: ISAS - Japan

Hiten (originally called Muses-A) was an ISAS (Japanese Space Agency) Earth orbiting satellite designed primarily to test and verify technologies for future lunar and planetary missions. The spacecraft carried a small satellite named Hagoromo which was released into orbit around the Moon. Hiten itself was put into a highly elliptical Earth orbit which passed by the Moon ten times during the mission, which ended when Hiten was intentionally crashed into the Moon on 10 April 1993. The primary objectives of the mission were to: 1) test trajectory control utilizing gravity assist double lunar swingbys; 2) insert a sub-satellite into lunar orbit; 3) conduct optical navigation experiments on a spin-stabilized spacecraft; 4) test fault tolerant onboard computer and packet telemetry; 5) conduct cis-lunar aerobraking experiments; and 6) detect and measure mass and velocity of micro-meteorite particles. Three follow-on objectives were also added: excursion to the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points of the Earth-Moon system, orbit of the Hiten spacecraft around the Moon, and hard landing on the lunar surface. Hiten was named after a flying, music-playing Buddhist angel. Hagoromo was named for the veil worn by Hiten. This mission included Japan's first-ever lunar flyby, lunar orbiter, and lunar surface impact.

Selene (SELenological and ENgineering Explorer)
Lunar Orbiter and Lander
Launch Period: 2005
Agency: ISAS, NASDA - Japan

Selene will carry 13 instruments including imagers, a radar sounder, laser altimeter, X-ray fluorescence spectrometer and gamma-ray spectrometer to study the origin, evolution, and tectonics of the Moon from orbit. The 2000 kg launch-mass spacecraft will be carried by an H-2A rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center. The spacecraft consists of three separate units: the main orbiter, a small relay satellite, and a small VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry) satellite. The orbiter is a rectangular box carrying the scientific instrumentation, measures about 2.1 m by 4.2 m, and has a mass of roughly 1600 kg. The relay satellite is an octagonal prism and will be used to transmit communications from the orbiter to Earth. The VLBI satellite is the same shape as the relay satellite and will be used to conduct precise investigations on the position and precession of the Moon.

Selene will take 5 days to reach the Moon, where it will be put into an initial 120 x 13000 km orbit at an inclination of 95 degrees. The relay satellite will be released into a 100 x 2400 km orbit and then the VLBI satellite will be released into a 100 x 800 km orbit. The orbiter will then be lowered to its nominal 100 km circular orbit. Selene will carry out observations for approximately one year.

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The Japanese plan many more planetary missions, including a 2007 Venus orbiter called Planet-C. This will be extremely valuable to planetary scientists, providing the international community with a huge amount of novel data, including optical observations of the surface through the narrow 1 micron NIR window in the atmosphere. This should allow unambiguous identification of active volcanism, unlike all previous USSR/US attempts.

-Karl

• SMART-1 from ESA (the only one this BBC article mentions)
• LUNAR-A from ISAS/NASDA (Japan).
• SELENE also from ISAS.
• TrailBlazer and Electra from TransOrbital Inc.
• Lunar Retriever from AppliedSpace Resources
• IceBreaker from Lunacorp
• Lunar Service from Celestis (you have to be dead...)
• Lunar Architecture is a subject of study for HJ Rombaut, including a recent Lunar Base design workshop
• Bill Mook's lunar tours
• The Artemis Project

• SMART-1 from ESA (the only one this BBC article mentions)
• LUNAR-A from ISAS/NASDA (Japan).
• SELENE also from ISAS.
• TrailBlazer and Electra from TransOrbital Inc.
• Lunar Retriever from AppliedSpace Resources
• IceBreaker from Lunacorp
• Lunar Service from Celestis (you have to be dead...)
• Lunar Architecture is a subject of study for HJ Rombaut, including a recent Lunar Base design workshop
• Bill Mook's lunar tours
• The Artemis Project

The real site, to me, is : www.isas.ac.jp

The one linked looks like a scam to get a few millions address email of people interested in space/science. Here comes the sci./tech. spam ! Nowhere on the official site ( that I can see ) do they talk about leaving your name on the asteroid.

J.

I am (obviously) not T, but I feel that in his defense I must say that it is obvious to me that he was more speaking of non-manned prototypes. The blurb was not very descriptive, but the picture certainly does give the impression of a remotely controlled vehicle. Losing human life (even if much can be learned from the event) is a tragedy. I don't think that anyone will dispute that (baring lawyer jokes).

Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science has been flying a small-scale remotely-piloted VTVL demonstrator craft on a fairly small budget as a proof-of-concept vehicle, seen here flying around as a naked framework(!) and here with it's skin on.

If anyone from Japan knows more about this, I'd love to hear about it.

Jon Acheson

Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science has been flying a small-scale remotely-piloted VTVL demonstrator craft on a fairly small budget as a proof-of-concept vehicle, seen here flying around as a naked framework(!) and here with it's skin on.

If anyone from Japan knows more about this, I'd love to hear about it.

Jon Acheson

I, for one, am eagerly awaiting 10^9 meter baseline radio interferometers. Also, if you build an optical interferometer of that kind of scale, you can pick out the canals on Mars from Alpha Centauri. Or vice-versa.

Well, there's always the Japanese HALCA satellite, part of the VSOP project. This was the first working satellite for a Space VLBI mission, and it had the expected problems with dealing with interferometry between quickly moving objects. True, it's apogee is only at 21 400 km, so it's not quite at the 10^9m level, but it's close.

While HALCA itself is nearing the end of its useful operating lifespan (There were some problems with the satellite losing its targetting that resulted in using up the maneuvering fuel faster than planned), the success of the mission has helped get the Russian Radioastron project back on its feet, and pave the way for other Space VLBI projects.

The main problems in space interferometry have already been tested and dealt with, and there's been some work in the radio astronomy community for dual-satellite interferometry, once some of the second-genaration systems like VSOP-2 and ARISE are in space in a few years. With two satellites each with a 50 000km apogee, we can actually hit the 10^9 meter baseline level.

(Yes, I know a moderate amount about this from my work with the S2 data recording system which is used at a number of radio observatories around the world for VLBI.)

-- Bryan Feir

I, for one, am eagerly awaiting 10^9 meter baseline radio interferometers. Also, if you build an optical interferometer of that kind of scale, you can pick out the canals on Mars from Alpha Centauri. Or vice-versa.

Well, there's always the Japanese HALCA satellite, part of the VSOP project. This was the first working satellite for a Space VLBI mission, and it had the expected problems with dealing with interferometry between quickly moving objects. True, it's apogee is only at 21 400 km, so it's not quite at the 10^9m level, but it's close.

While HALCA itself is nearing the end of its useful operating lifespan (There were some problems with the satellite losing its targetting that resulted in using up the maneuvering fuel faster than planned), the success of the mission has helped get the Russian Radioastron project back on its feet, and pave the way for other Space VLBI projects.

The main problems in space interferometry have already been tested and dealt with, and there's been some work in the radio astronomy community for dual-satellite interferometry, once some of the second-genaration systems like VSOP-2 and ARISE are in space in a few years. With two satellites each with a 50 000km apogee, we can actually hit the 10^9 meter baseline level.

(Yes, I know a moderate amount about this from my work with the S2 data recording system which is used at a number of radio observatories around the world for VLBI.)

-- Bryan Feir

I, for one, am eagerly awaiting 10^9 meter baseline radio interferometers. Also, if you build an optical interferometer of that kind of scale, you can pick out the canals on Mars from Alpha Centauri. Or vice-versa.

Well, there's always the Japanese HALCA satellite, part of the VSOP project. This was the first working satellite for a Space VLBI mission, and it had the expected problems with dealing with interferometry between quickly moving objects. True, it's apogee is only at 21 400 km, so it's not quite at the 10^9m level, but it's close.

While HALCA itself is nearing the end of its useful operating lifespan (There were some problems with the satellite losing its targetting that resulted in using up the maneuvering fuel faster than planned), the success of the mission has helped get the Russian Radioastron project back on its feet, and pave the way for other Space VLBI projects.

The main problems in space interferometry have already been tested and dealt with, and there's been some work in the radio astronomy community for dual-satellite interferometry, once some of the second-genaration systems like VSOP-2 and ARISE are in space in a few years. With two satellites each with a 50 000km apogee, we can actually hit the 10^9 meter baseline level.

(Yes, I know a moderate amount about this from my work with the S2 data recording system which is used at a number of radio observatories around the world for VLBI.)

-- Bryan Feir

though not necessarily capable of the highest resolution (the USA's Very Large Baseline Interferometer currently holds that record).
Bzzz. Wrong. Typical american inward looking attitude. The VLBA (Very Large Baseline ARRAY) does VLBI (Very LONG Baseline Interferometry) combined with the European VLBI Network (EVN) to make a telescope the size of the Earths diameter. But even this is not good enough, the Japanese VSOP project does VLBI between Earth based telescopes and a radio telescope in orbit.
http://www.jive.nl/jive/evn
http://www.vsop.isas.ac.jp

A joint mission between NASA and a Japanese counterpart is planing a mission called MUSES-C. It is supposed to drop a tiny rover on an asteroid.

It does not seem to use a harpoon, though :-)