After the war against Ukraine, Russia started to lose its partners in space. The Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos), which had previously experienced tensions with NASA, ESA and SpaceX, said they could seize a telescope belonging to Germany.
Germany’s eROSITA telescope will stay in Russia
The eROSITA space telescope, which was launched in 2019 by connecting to Roscosmos’s spacecraft, may be being taken away from Germany. Germany, which suspended its work in space with Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, said that it would keep eROSITA on hold. Roscosmos claimed that he could seize the spacecraft and continue the operation alone.
Developed by the Max Planck Institute in Germany, the eROSITA telescope was launched in 2019 together with ART-XC X-ray, Russia’s observation telescope. However, it was put into sleep mode after the Ukraine war.
The latest threat from Roscosmos said that Germany can open eROSITA again without permission. Russia even claimed that it could combine this telescope with the ART-XC X-ray and capture it. The statement on the subject came from Roscosmos manager Dmitry Rogozin.
Rogozin stated in a television program he attended that Germany did not have the right to stop this research “just because they were enemies”. The Chief of Roscosmos used the following statements regarding eROSITA:
“I have instructed to start work on restoring the German telescope in the Spektr-RG system so it will work with the Russian telescope. Despite Germany’s request to shut down one of the two telescopes at Spektr-RG, Russian experts continue their work.”
Spektr-RG, the joint space exploration project of Russia and Germany, has approximately 1.5 million circling miles away. The future of the Spektr-RG research, which is planned to continue for 7.5 years under normal conditions, seems to be up to Russia.
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