Russian experts will continue their attempts to re-establish contact with the Spektr-R orbiting radio telescope for around a month, a source in the rocket and space industry told Sputnik on Wednesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th January, 2019) Russian experts will continue their attempts to re-establish contact with the Spektr-R orbiting radio telescope for around a month, a source in the rocket and space industry told Sputnik on Wednesday.
On Saturday, the director of the Astro Space Center of the Physical Institute of the Russian academy of Sciences told Sputnik that contact with the Spektr-R, launched back in 2011, was lost due to communications failure. Specialists of the Russian Lavochkin Research and Production Association (Lavochkin NPO) found on Sunday that the last of Spektr-R's three sets of receiving and transmitting devices ceased to function, and therefore the telescope was no longer able to receive commands from Earth.
"Specialists of the Lavochkin NPO and the Russian Space Systems will continue their attempts to re-establish contact with the Spektr-R for about another month," the source said.
The source specified that experts believed that Spektr-R's receiver and transmitter modules could have been affected by the Sun and the plasma "clouds" coming from it.
"Such things happen with electronic equipment in space. And then everything recovers gradually," the source said.
After 2030, Russia will launch a a new space telescope called Spektr-M, which will continue the work that Sperktr-R previously carried out. Before this, however, ground telescopes will fulfill Spektr-R's functions.
