Space-to-space Radio Interferometry System from Medium Earth Orbits

This paper presents a new concept to perform space-to-space Very Long Baseline Interferometry which enables the imaging of cosmic sources at high-resolution and high-sensitivity with small antennas.Several individual apertures are embarked on separate identical satellites staggered in height into Polar or Equatorial Circular Medium Earth Orbits(PECMEO orbits).These orbits are stable and allow GNSS-based on-the-fly centimeter-level relative positioning.Coherent operation is possible by exchanging local oscillator components and measured signals through Inter-Satellite Links(ISL).On-board cross correlation is performed at each satellite over a delay window compatible with the accuracy of the on-the-fly relative positioning and the result sent to the ground.Image reconstruction is completed on the ground thanks to sub-millimeter baseline retrieval from accurate GNSS orbits,ISL ranging and spacecraft attitude information.The application of this concept to image the Super Massive Black Hole Sgr A~* is hinted.