Speaker
Description
The Chinese Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network (CVN) currently consists of six ground-based radio telescopes, one space-borne experimental telescope, and a data processing center affiliated with the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory. Two newly commissioned 40-meter telescopes are located in Shigatse, Tibet Autonomous Region, and Changbai Mountain, Jilin Province. Shigatse and Changbai stations have joined China’s first asteroid sample-return mission, Tianwen-2 (TW-2), in May 2025. New receivers are under development, with the goal of operating from the L to K/Q/W bands .
The “6-station + 1-center” configuration has extended the longest baseline of the CVN from 3200 km to 3800 km. This six-telescope setup enables the construction of two 3-station subnetworks for simultaneous observations, thereby supporting space VLBI observations and high-precision deep-space probe orbit determination. Besides, the Lunar Orbital VLBI Experiment (LOVEX) – which utilizes a 4.2-meter space VLBI telescope onboard the Queqiao-2 lunar relay satellite – has expanded the CVN from an Earth-based network to an Earth-space integrated network.
The baseline length of LOVEX can extend up to approximately 400,000 kilometers, making it the longest VLBI baseline to date. Recently, LOVEX has obtained VLBI fringes of the blazar AO 0235+164 and captured the telemetry signal of Chang’e-6 along the Earth-Moon baseline. In the future, with the addition of more ground-based and space-borne VLBI telescopes, the sensitivity and angular resolution of the CVN will be further improved, providing powerful tools for studying black hole physics, and the formation mechanisms of transient celestial sources.
