Japanese VLBI Space Observatory

The Japanese VLBI Space Observatory (VSOP) is a space-based radio telescope project designed to study the universe with extremely high resolution. It works by combining signals from a satellite and ground-based telescopes using a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), which effectively creates a giant Earth-sized telescope. This allows scientists to observe distant cosmic objects, such as black holes and quasars, in remarkable detail. Launched in the late 1990s, VSOP enhances our understanding of the universe's most energetic phenomena by providing sharper images than possible with ground telescopes alone.