MOSCOW. Aug 8 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia's Spectrum R astrophysical observatory, which was put to orbit on July 18, will start test transmission of scientific data a week from now, the Lavochkin Research and Production Center said on Monday.
"The test transmission from Spectrum R to the Pushchino observatory is preliminarily scheduled for the middle of August," it said.
Lavochkin is testing various systems of the orbiting observatory. "Contacts are daily; observatory systems are functioning normally," it said.
Spectrum R was designed within the Radioastron international project to order of the Federal Space Agency for studying solar wind, the interplanetary magnetic field, galaxies, quasars, black holes and neutron stars. It weighs 3,850 kilograms and has a useful life of five years.
The observatory is based on the Navigator universal platform developed at Lavochkin and a space radio-telescope with a ten-meter antenna built by the Astro-Space Center of the Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The Navigator platform carries a control unit, an electric power network and a propulsion unit.
The radio-telescope has a parabolic antenna and transmission systems. The antenna's reflector is made up of the central mirror and 27 lobes.