The science case and challenges of space-borne sub-millimeter interferometry

Understand

Ultra-high angular resolution in astronomy has always been an important vehicle for making fundamental discoveries.

• Recent results in direct imaging of the vicinity of the supermassive black hole in the nucleus of the radio galaxy M87 by the millimeter VLBI system Event Horizon Telescope and various pioneering results of the Space VLBI mission RadioAstron provided new momentum in high angular resolution astrophysics.
• In both mentioned cases, the angular resolution reached the values of about 10-20 microrcseconds.
• Further developments toward at least an order of magnitude "sharper" values are dictated by the needs of astrophysical studies and can only be achieved by placing millimeter and submillimeter wavelength interferometric systems in space.