Mission overview
Spectrum-RG is a Russian - Germany X-ray astrophysical observatory. Germany is responsible for the development of the key mission instrument - the X-ray grazing-incident mirror telescope eROSITA. The second experiment is ART-XC - an X-ray mirror telescope with a harder response than eROSITA, which is being developed by Russia (IKI, Moscow and VNIIEF, Sarov). The scientific payload is housed on the Navigator bus, developed by Lavochkin Association (Russia). Spectrum-RG will be delivered to L2 point with use of Soyuz-2 rocket and Fregat buster. The total mass of the SRG is about 2200 kg. The SRG mission will be launched from Baikonur and the observational program will last 7 years. The first 4 years will be devoted to an all-sky survey, and the rest of the mission lifetime will be spent on follow-on pointed observations of a selection of the most interesting galaxy clusters and AGNs.
The mission will conduct all-sky survey in the 0.5 - 11 keV band with the imaging telescopes eROSITA and ART-XC. It will permit the discovery of all obscured accreting Black Holes in nearby galaxies, many (~millions) new distant AGN, and the detection of all massive clusters of galaxies in the Universe. In addition to the all-sky survey, dedicated sky regions will be observed with higher sensitivity and thereafter follow-on pointed observations of selected sources at energies up to 30 keV will take place in order to investigate the nature of dark matter, dark energy and physics of accretion.
Last updated: December 17 2015
