Russia launches major new telescope into space

Russia becomes the first country to launch Proton-M rocket that will deliver a space telescope into the orbit which will conduct a complete x-ray survey of the sky by 2025.

Moscow:Russia's space agency Roscosmos has successfully launched a Russian Proton-M rocket on Saturday in order to deliver a cutting edge space telescope into the orbit.

Roscosmos said that the telescope, named Spektr-RG, was delivered into a parking orbit before a final burn on Saturday that kicked the spacecraft out of Earth's orbit and on to its final destination: the L2 Lagrange point.

Lagrange points are unique positions in the solar system where objects can maintain their position relative to the sun and the planets that revolve around it.

Located 1.5 million kilometres (0.93 million miles) from Earth, L2 is particularly ideal for telescopes such as Spektr-RG.

If all goes well, the telescope will arrive at its designated position in three months, becoming the first Russian spacecraft to operate beyond Earth's orbit since the Soviet era.

The telescope aims to conduct a complete x-ray survey of the sky by 2025, the first space telescope to do so.

Work on Spektr-RG telescope began in the 1980s but was scrapped in the 1990s.

Spektr-RG was revived in 2005 and redesigned to be smaller, simpler and cheaper.

Russian space science missions have suffered greatly since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

Budget cuts have forced the Russian space programme to shift toward more commercial efforts.