The Russian scientific community is speaking out unanimously against the unauthorized activation of the German eROSITA telescope aboard the Russian Spektr-RG space observatory, as suggested by Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin.
Spektr-RG, which stands for Spectrum + Röntgen + Gamma, the Russian-German high-energy astrophysics space observatory, was launched on 13 July 2019. It has two telescopes on board: the primary one, eROSITA, built by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, which works in the sensitivity range of 0.3–10 keV, and the secondary ART-XC, build in Russia, which is capable of capturing high energy X-ray photons within the 5-30 keV energy range.