Using Existing Spacecraft towards Long Baselines in VLBI

Abstract

Very-long baseline interferometry (VLBI) allows for exceptionally high-resolution imaging in radio astronomy. Ultimately the angular resolution of radio interferometers and telescopes is determined by the separation between antennas in the array. Building on this fundamental concept, potential uses of existing spacecraft radio systems for VLBI are explored. Coherent observations performed between ground radio telescopes (GRT) and spacecraft require stringent drift tolerances for timing and synchronization between the GRT and spacecraft. Observed data using the spacecraft antenna is then recorded and stored on-board before downlink. Among candidate spacecraft, a promising contender and focus of this paper is New Horizons. Currently at a distance greater than 45 AU, New Horizons offers an outstanding baseline for astronomical radio observation and provides necessary, configurable instrumentation for performing an extended baseline observation in conjunction with a GRT or other spacecraft. Communications with New Horizons are synchronized with a 30 MHz clock signal using an ultra-stable oscillator (USO), providing an exceptional Allan Deviation of $3\times 10^{-13}$ per one second integration time. Of the instruments on-board New Horizons, the Radio Science Experiment (REX) is of particular interest for its potential towards VLBI application. Developed for atmospheric measurements during occultations between the 7.182 GHz uplink from the 70 meter NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) antenna and Pluto/Charon, REX also successfully performed axial radiometric measurements of the Cygnus-A and Cassiopeia-A galaxies using the New Horizons high-gain antenna (HGA). The REX instrument's infusion with the New Horizons HGA allows for any radio measurement to be recorded, stored on-board, and ultimately to be downlinked to the DSN. For VLBI, New Horizons could receive command data for timed three-dimensional alignment synchronous to a ground-based observation. The observed data would then be recorded, downlinked, correlated, and processed for synthesized imaging. Using New Horizons for VLBI would be a proof-of-concept. With a fixed observation frequency, narrow bandwidth and receiver sensitivity of −177 dBm, New Horizons is limited as an extension for long-baseline radio interferometry. Given these restrictions, a successful VLBI measurement using New Horizons would still result in the highest angular resolution for any radio observation ever, at an astonishing 1.34 nanoarcseconds. Expanding the applications of New Horizons to VLBI observations encourages collaboration within the growing infrastructure for space-based astronomy.