Russian space telescope unfurls giant antenna

Russian space telescope unfurls giant antenna
A giant new Russian Space Telescope on Saturday unfurled their meat-like antenna, the radio waves from black holes and galaxies billions of light years away to be seen.
The operation of the 10-meter-diameter antenna of the R-Spketr telescope, which was started to deploy into orbit on Monday, was carried out successfully, said space agency Roskosmos said in a statement.
"According to telemetry data, the planned program was carried out completely," said Roskosmos.
Interfax said scientists at the Lavochkin institute outside Moscow on Friday had the difficult operation started, open up the plates of the dish, like the petals of a flower, but initially encountered potentially significant problems.
"It was not possible on Friday, all 27 of the petals go into their final position, despite numerous attempts to open it," a source space, which was not named, told the agency.
A new attempt was made on Saturday and now all the petals are in their working position, the source said.
Had the antenna is not deployed properly, it would have a terminal problem as the telescope would not have been possible to focus on deep space objects, the source said.
The telescope itself is on the moon in a test phase point and will begin his program of space exploration properties in about three months, Interfax said.
The radio space telescope, the launch was an important event in the Russian space program, marking the first space project in years and heralds a return to cosmic exploration.
Dubbed the "Russian Hubble" after the legendary U.S. space telescope, the Russian instrument, in fact, will be able to produce images with a resolution thousands of times larger.
The telescope will look at quasars, high-energy galactic centers in the distant Universe, fast-spinning pulsar star remnants and massive black holes. There is a minimum service life of at least five years.
Russia is finally due to start in November its highly anticipated Phobos-Grunt probe, try a soil sample from the Martian moon Phobos and return to Earth will pay attention to the Red Planet.
To celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's first manned space flight is to show Russia in the hope that it remains a global power in space science, despite a series of setbacks in recent years.
With the end of the U.S. space shuttle program is now the only nation capable of transporting humans to the International Space Station (ISS) has become.