Russia has successfully launched a new telescope into space, marking a major milestone for the country’s space science program — and potentially paving just how for the mapping regarding the cosmos at a consistent level of detail never before achieved.
The Spektr-RG telescope, a Russian-German joint venture, was successfully delivered into orbit by a Russian Proton-M rocket, The Associated Press reported. The rocket was released, following repeated delays, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Saturday evening, local time.
— Chris B – NSF (@NASASpaceflight) July 13, 2019
The telescope is en route to its final destination, the L2 Lagrange point, which the craft is anticipated to reach in around three months.
“Lagrange points are unique positions in the solar system where objects can maintain their position in accordance with the sun and the planets that orbit it,” AP explained.
L2, located about a million miles from Earth, is a favorite “parking place” for observatories because it offers a clear view of deep space. Once there, the telescope’s goal is to conduct a total X-ray survey for the sky ― one carried out “with outstanding sensitivity,” according to Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency.
It could be the first-ever map regarding the universe in high-energy X-rays, Nature magazine noted.
Such a map “will be important to solve the core questions of modern cosmology,” Roscosmos said in a press release. “How do dark energy and dark matter affect formation of the large-scale structure of the Universe? What is [the] cosmological evolution of supermassive black holes?”
The agency added that the telescope, which includes reportedly taken decades to develop, is expected to locate about “100,000 massive clusters of galaxies” and millions of supermassive black holes ― quite a few new to science ― over a four-year survey period.
#Spektr – RG must be a discovery machine. Scientists expect new insights on dark energy and dark matter, plus the anticipated identification of three million new supermassive black holes. https://t.co/jbSBWLCRaF
— Jonathan Amos (@BBCAmos) July 13, 2019
If Spektr-RG reaches L2, it is the initial Russian spacecraft to venture beyond Earth’s orbit since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. As AP noted, the prosperity of the mission will be a huge boon to Russia’s space program, which includes suffered from decades of budget cuts and failed projects.
This mission would put Russia during the “forefront of X-ray astronomy,” said Kirpal Nandra of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, one of Moscow’s collaborators in the Spektr-RG project.
“It’s a huge chance of them,” Nandra said, speaking into the BBC this week.
