* Astronomy

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RE: Radioastron

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Title: RadioAstron -- a Telescope with a Size of 300 000 km: Main Parameters and First Observational Results
Authors: N. S. Kardashev (ASC Lebedev), V. V. Khartov (Lavochkin Association), RadioAstron collaboration

The Russian Academy of Sciences and Federal Space Agency, together with the participation of many international organisations, worked toward the launch of the RadioAstron orbiting space observatory with its onboard 10-m reflector radio telescope from the Baikonur cosmodrome on July 18, 2011. Together with some of the largest ground-based radio telescopes and a set of stations for tracking, collecting, and reducing the data obtained, this space radio telescope forms a multi-antenna ground-space radio interferometer with extremely long baselines, making it possible for the first time to study various objects in the Universe with angular resolutions a million times better than is possible with the human eye. The project is targeted at systematic studies of compact radio-emitting sources and their dynamics. Objects to be studied include supermassive black holes, accretion disks, and relativistic jets in active galactic nuclei, stellar-mass black holes, neutron stars and hypothetical quark stars, regions of formation of stars and planetary systems in our and other galaxies, interplanetary and interstellar plasma, and the gravitational field of the Earth. The results of ground-based and inflight tests of the space radio telescope carried out in both autonomous and ground-space interferometric regimes are reported. The derived characteristics are in agreement with the main requirements of the project. The astrophysical science program has begun.

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The Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) has announced plans to launch the Radioastron astrophysical laboratory for observing extra-galactic objects in 2007.
Radioastron will make it possible to study highly massive black holes inside remote and neighbouring galaxies' nuclei, stellar-mass black holes inside the Milky Way Galaxy and neutron stars and the terrestrial gravitation field.

Scientists also hope to spot new super-powerful energy sources using Radioastron.
The project was co-authored by Nikolai Kardashev, full-time member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The radio telescope will function in conjunction with other orbital telescopes. Their interaction will help create a huge system over a vast distance roughly equal to that between the Earth and the Moon.
"As a result, we will obtain high-resolution images of black holes and neighbouring galaxies. The resolution of such images will exceed that of the human eye 20 million times. This is an international project. However, Russia will assemble most scientific equipment and other hardware," - Nikolai Kardashev.

Radioastron features extremely sensitive equipment that has already been tested at specialized R&D centres. The Lavochkin science and production association has produced a model of the radio telescope.
Launching Radioastron was last discussed more than 20 years ago, but never got off the ground because of inadequate monetary appropriations.
Nikolai Sanko, who heads the department of spacecraft instrumentation, said it would take over 1.5 billion roubles to complete this project.
"We are receiving the money stage by stage."

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