Having completed the installation of the signal chain, the team turned the antenna toward the sky on February 1 and observed peaks on Taurus A, Orion and 3C84! On February 5, we ran two coordinated sessions observing several strong radio sources using the new KPGO antenna and the antennas at Westford in Massachusetts and at the Goddard Geophysical and Astronomical Observatory (GGAO) in Maryland. Each session used a different pointing model for KPGO to maximize the chance of success. Once completed, the data from a selected scan (1749+096) from all three sites were transferred over the Internet to the correlator at MIT Haystack for cross-correlation and fringe search. Fringes for the Westford-GGAO baseline were found quickly, as one would expect, given the practice and experience gained with this VGOS-prototype baseline over the last year. Despite the long baselines to KPGO, the search to KPGO was not overly taxing either because the KPGO site position and maser behavior of KPGO (both derived from the KPGO 20m model) that are required as a priori model in the correlator were accurate enough to help narrow the fringe search to a relatively small window, hence expediting the process.

This represents a major milestone for the Space Geodesy Project and is the world's first 3-way broadband VLBI measurement. It was also the first long baseline broadband VLBI measurement, demonstrating the viability of the next-generation antenna for improving determination the Terrestrial Reference Frame and Earth Orientation Parameters.