X-Ray Telescope Designed for Dark Energy Search Ready to Launch

[Judi Lynn]

By Elizabeth Howell 15 hours ago

A German telescope is ready to search for dark energy and other strange things in the universe, launching Saturday (June 22) aboard a Russian rocket.

The telescope is hitching a ride with a parent satellite called Spektrum-Röntgen-Gamma (Spektr-RG) on board a Proton rocket. Blastoff is scheduled for 8:17 a.m. EDT (1217 GMT, 5:17 p.m. local time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. If all goes well for Russian space agency Roscosmos, Spektr-RG will spend four years surveying the entire sky and then 2.5 years zeroing in on particular cosmic objects. The launch was postponed from Friday (June 21) due to an unnamed issue.

Tucked on board Spektr-RG will be the German space agency (DLR)'s Extended Roentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array (eROSITA) X-ray telescope, which is billed as the best X-ray "eyes" ever to launch on a space telescope.



The German X-ray telescope called eROSITA, as seen before it was packed onto a Russian
Proton rocket for launch on June 21, 2019.

(Image credit: DLR)

"eROSITA will help researchers gain a better understanding of the structure and development of the universe, and also contribute towards investigations into the mystery of dark energy," Walther Pelzer, executive board member for DLR Space Administration, said in a statement. The DLR worked with the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics to develop eROSITA.

More:
https://www.space.com/erosita-dark-energy-telescope-launch.html