Germany shuts down Russian satellite's telescope in protest against Ukraine war

Germany has switched off the telescope aboard a Russian satellite after the two nations mutually ended cooperation over the latter's invasion of Ukraine. In an interview with Space.com, the spokesperson for Germany's Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics revealed that the telescope was "placed into safe mode during ground contact on Saturday, February 26”. The telescope named eROSITA was built by Germany to create the biggest ever map of black holes in the universe and was fitted in Russia’s Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma satellite before its launch in 2019. 

This move reportedly follows Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research announcement on suspending "all current and planned activities with Russia" until further notice. 

More on eROSITA telescope

The eROSITA telescope was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in 2019 and is now deployed at the second Lagrange point, which is 15 lakh kilometres from Earth. As mentioned above, the telescope has been designed to create the most detailed image of black holes and neutron stars and has already found 3 million new objects ever since it was made operational. Talking about the space-based X-ray telescope, scientist Andrea Merloni had told Space.com, "For the first time, we have an X-ray telescope that can be used in very similar ways as the large field optical telescopes that we use today. With eROSITA, we cover the entire sky very efficiently and can study large-scale structures, such as the entire Milky Way."

German space agency ends cooperation with Russia

Following Russia's growing aggression towards Ukraine, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) also announced on March 3 that it is ending its bilateral cooperation with Moscow. "All collaboration activities with Russian institutions on current projects or projects in the planning stage will be terminated. There will be no new projects or initiatives with institutions in Russia", the DLR said in its statement. 

The Russian space agency Roscosmos also ended its ties with Germany and announced that all the experiments planned aboard the International Space Station (ISS) on the Russian segment will now be conducted independently. "The State Corporation will not cooperate with Germany on joint experiments on the Russian segment of the ISS. Roskosmos will conduct them independently", Roscosmos wrote in its tweet and stated that the agency will now prioritise satellite development for Russia's defence sector.

Image: German Aerospace Center