AbstractThe Multi-site spectroscopic telescope is a virtual instrument and the name of a collaboration that opens up a new observational window by combining continuous observations of spectroscopic variations and simultaneous photometric monitoring. This constitutes an enormous observational effort, but in return promises to finally provide access to a mode identification for and an asteroseismological analysis of the pulsating sdB star PG 1605+072. Multi-Site Spectroscopic Telescope observations for this object have been secured during a large coordinated campaign in May and June of the year 2002. The frequency resolution and coverage of the photometric time series has been noticeably enhanced by a significant contribution from the Whole Earth Telescope, which was used to observe PG 1605+072 as an alternate target during the WET XCov22 campaign, also conducted in May 2002. This paper briefly outlines the motivation for the MSST project and tries to give a first assessment of the overall quality of the data obtained, with a focus on the Whole Earth Telescope observations.