Moscow. February 26. INTERFAX - The German Space Agency has notified Roscosmos of its intention to turn off its telescope at the Russian-German orbital observatory Spektr-RG, the head of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin said.
"Our German partners have been instructed to turn off one of these two telescopes, which they control themselves," Rogozin said on the Solovyov Live YouTube channel.
"As far as I understand, technical specialists from Germany are very worried about this, because this is a strong blow for them," he said.
The Spektr-RG spacecraft was launched on July 13, 2019 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It was created with the participation of Germany within the framework of the Federal Space Program of Russia by order of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The observatory is equipped with two X-ray telescopes: ART-XC (ICI RAS, Russia) and eROSITA (MPE, Germany), operating on the principle of oblique X-ray optics. The telescopes are installed on the Navigator space platform (NPO Lavochkina, Russia), adapted to the tasks of the project.