The largest subspace telescope in the Federation, and widely regarded as the most advanced in the Alpha Quadrant, the Argus array has had something of a troubled history. After going on line in 2365 a number of problems surfaced, mostly related to the subspace focusing mechanisms. These appeared to have been solved by 2366, but in 2367 the array stopped transmitting data altogether. The Enterprise-D investigated and found the cause to be a probe sent by the Cytherians; while there a failure in the reactor systems of the array threatened to destroy it, but an engineer from the Enterprise-D was able to prevent this from happening.Despite a successful resolution to this problem the array subsequently suffered from more failures, leading many to question the basic design. Despite these problems, however, the Argus array has made a number of highly important observations which have increased our understanding of the subspace structure both within and beyond our galaxy considerably.

During the Dominion war the array has been pressed into service as an intelligence gathering device; its performance in this role is highly classified, but given the capabilities of the array it should be capable of providing detailed information on installations many light years away. This must surely make the Argus array a prime target for the Dominion, and Starfleet can be expected to have located significant defensive systems at the site.

Type-Subspace Telescope