The SRG X-ray orbital observatory, its telescopes and first scientific results

Understand

The orbital observatory Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG), equipped with the grazing-incidence X-ray telescopes Mikhail Pavlinsky ART-XC and eROSITA, was launched by Roscosmos to the Lagrange L2 point of the Sun-Earth system on July 13, 2019.

• The launch was carried out from the Baikonur Cosmodrome by a Proton-M rocket with a DM-03 upper stage.
• The German telescope eROSITA was installed on SRG under an agreement between Roskosmos and the DLR, the German Aerospace Agency.
• In December 2019, SRG started to perform its main scientific task: scanning the celestial sphere to obtain X-ray maps of the entire sky in several energy ranges (from 0.2 to 8 keV with eROSITA, and from 4 to 30 keV with ART-XC).