Turning American Radio Astronomy into Art | The Very Large Array (VLA) The United States National Science Foundation (NSF) Very Large Array (VLA) is a powerful radio telescope in New Mexico composed of 27 movable antennas that work together as one enormous instrument to observe faint cosmic radio waves. Conceived in the 1960s at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) to complement single-dish telescopes, it was preceded by the Green Bank Interferometer that helped develop key technologi