Russia wants to restart a German telescope to search for black holes, which went into space aboard a Russian satellite in 2019. Germany ordered the telescope to be preserved in early March in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
The telescope called eROSITA and mounted on the Russian Spectrum-WG spacecraft, scans the sky for X-ray sources (black holes and neutron stars) and works in tandem with the Russian instrument ART-X, which searches for supermassive black holes.
Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, loudly supported the invasion, incl. threatens to withdraw from International Space Station partnership. On Saturday (June 4th), Rogozin said on Russian television that Russia plans to re-launch eROSITA without German permission, according to a German website. Deutsche Welle (opens in a new section).
Connected: Germany turns off a black hole telescope on a Russian satellite, suspends cooperation in space
“I have given instructions to start work on restoring the work of the German telescope in the Spektr-RG system so that it works together with the Russian telescope,” Rogozin said, according to Deutsche Welle. “They – the people who decided to turn off the telescope – have no moral right to stop this study of humanity just because their pro-fascist views are close to our enemies.
Space.com contacted the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, which runs eROSITA, but the institute declined to comment.
However, Russian scientists involved in the collaboration reportedly criticized the idea, saying that restarting eROSITA without German involvement could damage the telescope.
“Our management of eROSITA is not easy and in some respects even risky, because we did not create this device and did not operate it,” Alexander Sergeev, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told the Russian agency. Interfax (opens in a new tab) according to a Google translation.
But Rogozin seemed unperturbed in a Publication in a telegram (opens in a new section) attributed to him, he said in response to Sergeev’s statement that “Roscosmos specialists will be able to” solve their assigned tasks without damaging the control circuit of the German telescope, “according to a Google translation. .
“The telescope was turned off not by the Germans, but by Russian specialists at the request of Germany,” Rogozin wrote in an unverified June 6 publication. “Russian astronomers need a working observatory, not an excluded piece of iron and glass hanging a million and a half kilometers [900,000 miles] from the ground.”
Ars Technique (opens in a new section) announced on Monday (June 6th) that, according to unnamed German officials, restarting the scientific instrument without Germany’s participation “could cause damage to the telescope”.
From a legal point of view, the situation seems a bit murky. Russia, which launched the Spektr-RG spacecraft, is also registered as its sole owner with the United Nations register of space objects (opens in a new section), Christopher Johnson, a space law adviser at the Secure World Foundation, told Space.com.
“Because it is a registered state and a launching state, Russia’s control over the site is quite strong,” Johnson told Space.com, citing Space Treaty (opens in a new section), a document of the United Nations, which sets out rules for international cooperation in space. “Germany still owns eROSITA, despite being on a Russian spacecraft, and both sides have an obligation to cooperate and pay due attention to the other, as well as not to interfere in the other’s right to explore space and perform space science.
However, Russia may interpret Germany’s withdrawal from co-operation as interfering with their ability to pursue science, although Johnson said the argument did not necessarily justify restarting the instrument. “Russia has no right to explore space with another country’s telescope,” he said.
Things were going well for eROSITA before the invasion of Ukraine. The telescope, which observes the universe in X-rays, released its first batch of data from the scientific community in July 2021, revealing more than 3 million newly discovered black holes and neutron stars.
Follow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @ ТерезаПултарова. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and so on Facebook.
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