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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Telescopic Observations _ Spektr-R - a new radio telescope!
Posted by: Zvezdichko Jan 4 2009, 09:55 AM
http://space.skyrocket.de/index_frame.htm?http://www.skyrocket.de/space/doc_sdat/radioastron.htm
Wow, this one is big!
And yes, launch was scheduled for 2008, but there was a general meeting last month (ref. laspace.ru) and looks like they are on track for launch this year! And they will use a Zenit rocket this time.
* central engine of AGN and physical processes near super massive black holes providing an acceleration of cosmic rays - size, velocity and shape of emitting region in the core, spectrum, polarization and variability of emitting components;
* cosmological models, dark matter and dark energy - by studying dependence of above mentioned AGN's parameters with redshift, and by observing gravitational lensing;
* structure and dynamics of star and planets forming regions in our Galaxy and in AGN - by studying maser and Mega maser radio emission;
* neutron (quark?) stars and black holes in our Galaxy, their structure and dynamics - by VLBI and measurements of visibility scintillations, proper motions and parallaxes;
* structure and distribution of interstellar and interplanetary plasma - by fringe visibility scintillations of pulsars;
* building of high accuracy astronomical reference system of coordinates;
* building of high accuracy model of the Earth gravity field.
I say... WOW! WOW!
Posted by: Hungry4info Jan 5 2009, 12:25 AM
Well that was sudden...
Two surprise missions in a row from Russia (or have I just been hiding in a cave?). What else do they have up their sleeves? This is really neat, and that they're going to launch this year either implies that they're committed and are serious, or... perhaps are being too optimistic.
Posted by: nprev Jan 5 2009, 03:55 AM
Looks like a great mission! 
Curious as to why they're gonna put it in HEO instead of out at a Lagrange point (solar or lunar), though; seems like you'd get a better & obviously much more constant VLBI separation. Is this just because of booster constraints?
Posted by: Del Palmer Jan 5 2009, 08:20 AM
They say that "budget problems have forced a redesign" which sounds pretty constraining.
You'd need one heck of an upper stage to get that big ol' hunk of iron to L1/L2...Posted by: Zvezdichko Jan 11 2009, 12:16 PM
http://www.roscosmos.ru/NewsDoSele.asp?NEWSID=5144
Russia will launch a new telescope in 2012 called - "Spektr - RG", which will study dark energy.
"Spektr-RG" - this is something new.
Posted by: NGC3314 Jan 11 2009, 11:20 PM
Spektr-RG is, as best I can tell, the same as Spektr X-Gamma which has been in the works for a long time. (It's really good to see these missions moving on, along with Spektr-UV alias the World Space Observatory).
Re Radioastron (also in the works, with NASA participation on and off and on and off, for years) - a highly elliptical orbit is good for this application, since sampling a wider range of baselines (in wavelength units) improves the reconstruction of source structures. Ideally, a perigee not much more than an Earth diameter in altitude would allow nearly continuous baseline coverage with a worldwide network of radio telescopes. HALA gave substantial experience in the technique, meaning that much of the standard software kows how to deal with an orbiting station, and gave enough information on structure of such things as quasar cores to be able to design the Radioastron mission more intelligently.
Posted by: dvandorn Jan 12 2009, 01:08 AM
The Russians have tried radio telescopy from LEO before -- for example, the KRT-10 they hung off the back of Salyut 6 back in 1979. As I recall, they didn't get much in the way of good data from it...
-the other Doug
Posted by: NGC3314 Jan 12 2009, 02:02 PM
Indeed, a fairly concerted search hasn't turned up any mention of results in the usual Russian journals or observatory publications (note to close followers of Salyut - I'd be pleased to hear of any!). This is in contrast to the power-hungry BST-1M submillimeter telescope on Salyut 6. As best I can tell, it was used mostly for terrestrial and airglow observations, but did obtain some detections of more distant targets such as Jupiter.
Posted by: Zvezdichko Jul 6 2009, 12:07 PM
An update!!!
http://www.roscosmos.ru/NewsDoSele.asp?NEWSID=6671
Looks like tests of the model are underway... Photos included!
Posted by: NGC3314 Jul 7 2009, 04:15 PM
http://www.roscosmos.ru/NewsDoSele.asp?NEWSID=6671
Looks like tests of the model are underway... Photos included!
Thanks for the pointer - after such a long haul, it's very encouraging to see full-scale tests of a complete engineering model. That also provides a great example of how to fold up a large dish antenna into a payload shroud.
Posted by: kto Jul 18 2011, 11:15 PM
operational orbit reached successfully...
http://www.roscosmos.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=17569
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1107/18spektr/index.html
Posted by: GEmin1 Jul 23 2011, 12:44 PM
Great news:
Radiotelescope mirror has been successfully deployed on July 23.
http://www.roscosmos.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=12017
Posted by: kap Jul 26 2011, 04:19 PM
http://www.roscosmos.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=12017
I'm somewhat new to following these projects online. How much data do the Russians typically share with other scientists, and the public?
-kap
Posted by: NGC3314 Jul 26 2011, 11:32 PM
-kap
There's little direct post-USSR experience on deep-sky astro missions, but the Soviet tradition was increasingly to have data appear in the usual astronomical research journals. For Radioastron=Spektr-R, it seems there will be an open call for proposed observations - someone over at nasasaceflight.com found the http://www.asc.rssi.ru/radioastron/documents/rauh/en/rauh.pdf. This aspect would mirror the international availability of time on Hubble, Chandra, XMM-Newton, etc. as long as the proposals rank high enough in review. I'd bet the instrument team already has staked out the black holes at the Galactic Center
and in M87!
Posted by: machi Jul 27 2011, 09:39 AM
Spektr-R is space radiotelescope and Radioastron is international science project, involving Spektr-R as part of radiointerferometer. So foreign scientist are involved in this project. In fact many older russian space mission were international missions or they were part of international science projects and some data from such missions are available even at PDS (Planetary Data System). For example images from Phobos spacecraft and Vega-1 and Vega-2 spacecrafts (part of IHW project).
Posted by: GEmin1 Sep 17 2011, 12:16 PM
has shown that the clock works properly, its stability
is reported to be within the specs.
- Tests of "VIRK", the system which includes high-gain 1.5-m
diameter antennae and is used to contact with the tracking station
in Pushchino, continue. The so-called "open loop", the tone signal
at 8 GHz, was successfully detected in Pushchino and is being used
to perform Doppler measurements of the orbit parameters.
The 15 GHz tone signal was also successfully detected.
- Today, the first system temperature measurements were
performed for the Australian-made 18 cm astronomical receiver
while the space telescope was pointed on a cold sky;
the system temperature is estimated to be about 42 K
which is close to receiver's specifications.
Plans for the near future:
- VIRK pointing correction measurements and 15 GHz data link tests,
- performance measurements for all the other astronomical receivers
of the 92, 6, and 1.3 cm bands,
- Cassiopea A first light single-dish radio astronomical observations
including space radio telescope efficiency measurements.
http://www.asc.rssi.ru/radioastron/news/news.html
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