OREANDA-NEWS. August 24, 2009. During the International Aviation & Space Salon, the Federal Space Agency of Russia (Roskosmos) and the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V., DRL) signed an agreement for cooperation under the project to launch Spectrum X Gamma (Spektrum-Roentgen-Gamma, or SRG) orbital observatory by 2012.

The observatory will have two X-ray telescopes: eROSITA (Germany) and ART-XC (Russia).

The Russian Federal Nuclear Center-All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics (RFNC-VNIIEF) is also taking part in this project. In cooperation with the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IKI RAN), VNIIEF is designing the ART-XC telescope.