ASTRONOMY 



Much radio astronomy today is, by nature, an international 

 undertaking in that it involves very long baseline interferometry 

 (VLBI) facilities in cooperation with other nations. Moreover, two 

 U.S. radio astronomical facilities — the Very Large Array (VLA) and 

 the Areclbo 1,000-foot radio/radar telescope — are unique facilities 

 which, consequently, are used by foreign scientists who otherwise 

 would not have access to such facilities. 



U.S. optical telescopes, on the other hand, tend to be used ex- 

 clusively by U.S. scientists because other nations tend to have their 

 own. In addition, an international European consortium owns, oper- 

 ates, manages, and staffs the 140-inch optical telescope of the 

 European Southern Observatory which is located in Chile. 



All the U.S. astronomical facilities listed in table 5 and 

 briefly described in appendix 6, whether heavily involved in inter- 

 national cooperation or not, are owned, operated, and managed by U.S. 

 organizations and personnel. 



A number of astronomical big science facilities located in space 

 are discussed in chapter VII (see table 9) and appendix 8. Such fa- 

 cilities include ORBITING GEOPHYSICAL OBSERVATORIES (OGO), ORBITING 

 SOLAR OBSERVATORIES (OSO), ORBITING ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORIES (OAO) , 

 HIGH-ENERGY ASTRONOMY OBSERVATORIES (HEAO), the HUBBLE LARGE SPACE 

 TELESCOPE (LST), the GAMMA RAY OBSERVATORY (GRO), and the INTERNA- 

 TIONAL ULTRAVIOLET EXPLORER (lUE). The latter is about the only ex- 

 ample of a satellite used for physics and astronomy that is owned, 

 operationally funded, and managed jointly by the United States and 

 another entity, in this case the European Space Agency (ESA). The 

 HUBBLE LARGE SPACE TELESCOPE is managed by the United States, ESA and 

 the Federal Republic of Germany and some of the ASTROPHYSICS EXPLORER 

 satellites involve international cooperation in various forms (see 

 appendix 6). 



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