BAIKONUR. Nov 29 (Interfax) - The Russian-German space observatory Spektr-RG will be launched from Baikonur in April 2019, and there will be no launches of Proton rockets until then, a source at the cosmodrome told Interfax.
"There are no Proton launches scheduled for the first quarter of 2019. The first launch of the year is due to take place in April. The rocket will put the biggest space observatory, Spektr-RG, into orbit," the source said.
The observatory will be transported to the cosmodrome in the coming months.
"The observatory is expected to reach the cosmodrome in February 2019, and preparations for its launch will begin," the source said.
It was initially planned to launch the observatory in October 2018, but the Russian Space Systems Holding, the manufacturer of the observatory's radio complex, announced that it had been delayed until 2019.
The Spektr-Roentgen-Gamma consists of two telescopes: eRosita, built by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (Germany), and ART-XC, designed by the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and built by the Experimental Physics Institute in Sarov.
Spektr-RG is currently the only X-ray astronomy project planned for implementation in the next five years.
In contrast to the existent X-ray space telescopes, Spektr-RG will be capable of carrying out a full sky scan with a record level of response.
The space observatory will spend three years examining designated objects in the universe. Russia and Germany will own half of the observation time, which will be divided between the countries' astronomers and astrophysicists. All the information gathered by Spektr-RG will be open to the global scientific community.