A Space Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry Array of Three Orbiting Radio Telescopes Mapped Against the Reported Cosmic Axis

This paper presents a space mission design, computed from stated assumptions and not measured, built to measure one quantity: the dipole amplitude in source-position residuals aligned with the reported axis, for which the design case adopts 1.80e-03 as a fractional dipole amplitude. The instrument is three spacecraft each carrying a 9-metre deployable radio reflector and a hydrogen-maser frequency standard, observing quasars at 22 and 43 gigahertz with baselines up to forty times the Earth diameter, with correlation performed on the ground from recorded baseband data. It operates from three complementary high Earth orbits with apogees near 300,000 kilometres for 3 years. The one-day measurement uncertainty is 6.00e-03 as a fractional amplitude; averaged over the full mission of 1096 days it falls to 1.81e-04 as a fractional amplitude, giving a signal-to-noise ratio of 9.93 for the design case and a five-sigma detection limit of 9.06e-04 as a fractional amplitude. The spacecraft has a dry mass of 1420 kilograms, a wet mass of 1680 kilograms including propellant, and a total electrical load of 2054 watts supplied by a solar array of 5.92 square metres at the operating distance. Every performance figure in this paper comes from the deposited computation; the design is simulated, not measured, and no hardware described here has been built or flown.