Russia space telescope looks to distant suns

Russia's national space agency Roskosmos has launched a space observation radio telescope capable of viewing distant solar systems and the edge of the Milky Way galaxy.

A rocket taking off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur space centre placed the space vehicle, called the RadioAstron astrophysical observatory, in a stable but highly elliptical orbit, Roskosmos officials told the Interfax news agency.

The 3.8-tonne telescope will deploy a 10-metre antenna and communicate with ground stations to provide the highest-resolution images ever seen of distant bodies in space, said Viktor Khartov, a Roskosmos spokesman.

With its elliptical orbit the RadioAstron radio telescope, or as it is called in Russia - the Spectrum-R, will circle the Earth at varying altitudes.

At its apogee - the point at which it will be furthest from Earth - of 340,000 kilometres, the gravity of the Moon will shift its orbital route slightly, he said.

The telescope's constantly changing orbital route combined with new generation computing capacity on the ground will allow Roskosmos to develop images of distant planets and solar systems of never-before-seen quality, said Vladimir Andreanov, one of the telescope's designers.

Ground stations in Australia, Chile, China, Europe, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Ukraine, and the United States will contribute capacity to the multinational project.

"There has never been a degree of resolution like our Spectrum ... it gives much sharper angles on an object than has ever been possible using telescopes on the ground," Andreanov said. "We have not had a programme like this in 20 years."

Russia currently operates five ground-based radio telescopes. The first-ever space-based radio telescope used only for celestial observation, Japan's HALCA, ceased operations in 2005.

The US' Hubble telescope, in operation since 1990 and nearing the end of its service life, views celestial bodies using optical lenses.

The Spectrum-R telescope will remain in orbit for five years, and will provide images better than the current top quality of space images by telescopes such as Hubble "theoretically ... by hundreds of thousands of times," Andreanov said.

Targeted space objects for the Spectrum-R observation include neutron stars, quasars, black holes and pulsars.

Additional Spectrum-R radio telescopes will be launched in 2013 and 2015, Khartov said.