Russia orbits world’s largest space telescope

For several years now a scale model of Russia’s RadioAstron astrophysical observatory (also known as Spektr-R) has been touring international aerospace exhibitions. MAKS 2011 will be no exception. This time around, however, the model will no longer represent a paper-and-pencil project but a fully operational spacecraft.

July 18th, 2011, marked a milestone event for Russian space science as a Zenit-3SLBF launch vehicle, topped with a Fregat-SB booster, blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome with the world’s largest space telescope on board. RadioAstron was inserted into the planned elliptical orbit with an apogee of 330,000 km. It became Russia’s largest scientific spacecraft in orbit since the loss of the CORONAS-Photon satellite in 2010.

There was a moment of tension when the antenna petals failed to deploy properly on the first try. The lead developer Lavochkin NPO resolved the problem within 24 hours, after which RadioAstron underwent a series of scheduled in-orbit tests. RadioAstron is an international project. It operates in conjunction with radio telescopes on the ground to form a very-long-baseline, superhigh-resolution interferometer. The developer promises that the telescope will be capable of imagery resolution 10 times higher than that of ground-based radio interferometers, and 100 times higher than the resolution offered by X-ray and gamma-ray space telescopes.