RadioAstron status update

The RadioAstron spacecraft is undergoing the final assembly and tests in the Lavochkin Association. The launch is preliminary planned to happen in June 2010 from Baikonur (Kazakhstan).

The Zenit-2 rocket and Fregat-SB booster will be used. Building of the tracking station in Pushchino on the basis of the 22-meter antennae is finished, tests are undergoing.

The hard disc based RadioAstron data recording (RDR) system and the RadioAstron software correlator located in Astro Space Center are built and tested successfully -- interferometric fringes are found. Ground-based VLBI tests with RadioAstron observing modes involving RDR and RadioAstron software correlator will continue. Meanwhile international teams of scientists led by the Mission are preparing the fringe search and early science programs. Documents describing these programs as well as announcements of opportunities for observing with the RadioAstron spacecraft are to be announced at a later point.

RadioAstron project is an international collaborative mission to launch a free flying satellite carrying a 10-meter radio telescope in high apogee orbit around the Earth. The aim of the mission is to use the space telescope to conduct interferometer observations in conjunction with the global ground radio telescope network in order to obtain images, coordinates, motions and evolution of angular structure of different radio emitting objects in the Universe with the extraordinary high angular resolution.

 

Source: Astro Space Center
	More on • RadioAstron • Space Telescopes