Specialists from the State Corporation Roscosmos will examine whether the German Erosita Telescope, which was turned off at the Russian Specter-RG Observatory, can be operated at the request of Germany. This was stated by the head of the State Corporation Dmitry Rogozin in an interview with the Rosia-24 TV channel (VGTRK) on Saturday.

He said that he had proposed to look into the possibility of changing our control with the control of the German Telescope.

The goal is to become “the full owners and operators of the entire Space Observatory.”

The test may take 2-4 months, depending on the disease.

Roscosmos assured the Russian Academy of Sciences that this would be done by high-level professionals assembled at the NPO, including the Space Observatory itself, Lavochkin, and that information on the progress of the study of the telescope’s control system would be passed on to the State Corporation of Russia.

On June 6, Alexander Sergeev, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that Russian scientists were concerned that Roscosmos was planning to launch its own German telescope. “We did not create this device, we did not operate it,” Sergiev said.

In his opinion, this is a “very serious, unique” technology. Russian scientists are “concerned” that they can “control” the telescope properly in principle and that they will destroy the instrument there.

A letter describing the position of the Russian Academy of Sciences was sent to Sergei Rogos. In addition, the Space Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences is scheduled to discuss the situation in June with the participation of “colleagues from the Science and Technology Council of Roscosmos”.

Rashid Sunyev, scientific director of the Specter-RG Observatory project, said the resumption of operation of the German telescope would be possible only with the consent of the German side. In this case, the unilateral actions of the Russian side, in his opinion, “add more mistrust among the people.”

On June 4, Dmitry Rogozin announced that he had instructed the Erosita Telescope to resume operations. “We will correct Germany’s mistake and turn on their telescope in our observatory,” he said.

The Spektr-RG space observatory was launched on July 13, 2019 from the Bikonur Cosmodrome. It was created with the participation of Germany as part of the federal space program of the Russian Federation by order of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The device is equipped with two X-ray telescopes – Russian and German.

The main mission of the observation mission is to create an entire map of the sky with unprecedented sensitivity in the hard and soft ranges of the X-ray spectrum.

On February 26, the German space agency announced the intention to turn off the telescope at Roscosmos.