Astron was a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

space telescope A space telescope or space observatory is a telescope in outer space used to observe astronomical objects. Suggested by Lyman Spitzer in 1946, the first operational telescopes were the American Orbiting Astronomical Observatory, OAO-2 launch ...

launched on 23 March 1983 at 12:45:06 UTC, using the Proton launcher. Based on the

4MV The 4MV planetary probe (short for 4th-generation Mars-Venus probe) is a designation for a common design used for Soviet unmanned probes to Mars and Venus. It was an incremental improvement of earlier 3MV probes and was used for Mars missions 2 ...

spacecraft design and operational for six years, Astron was the largest

ultraviolet Ultraviolet (UV) is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelength from 10 nm (with a corresponding frequency around 30 PHz) to 400 nm (750 THz), shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays. UV radiati ...

space telescope of its time. The project was headed by Alexandr Boyarchuk. The spacecraft was designed and constructed by the

Crimean Astrophysical Observatory The Crimean Astrophysical Observatory (CrAO, obs. code: 095) is located at Nauchnij research campus, near the Central Crimean city of Bakhchysarai, on the Crimean peninsula. CrAO is often called simply by its location and campus name, ...

and NPO Lavochkin. A group of scientists from these institutions was awarded the

USSR State Prize The USSR State Prize (russian: links=no, Государственная премия СССР, Gosudarstvennaya premiya SSSR) was the Soviet Union's state honor. It was established on 9 September 1966. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, t ...

for their work. The payload consisted of an 80 cm ultraviolet telescope, which was jointly designed by the USSR and France, and an X-ray spectroscope. It could take UV spectra 150-350 nm. Placed into an orbit with an

apogee An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any el ...

of , Astron was capable of making observations outside the Earth's

umbra The umbra, penumbra and antumbra are three distinct parts of a shadow, created by any light source after impinging on an opaque object. Assuming no diffraction, for a collimated beam (such as a point source) of light, only the umbra is cast. ...

and radiation belt. Among the most important observations made by Astron were those of SN 1987A supernova from March 4 to March 12, 1987, and of

Halley's Comet Halley's Comet or Comet Halley, officially designated 1P/Halley, is a List of periodic comets, short-period comet visible from Earth every 75–79 years. Halley is the only known short-period comet that is regularly visible to the naked eye fr ...

in December 1985, the latter of which enabled a group of Soviet scientists to develop a model of the comet's

coma A coma is a deep state of prolonged unconsciousness in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light, or sound, lacks a normal wake-sleep cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. Coma patients exhi ...

. Operation of the observatory ended on 23 March 1991.

References

* Space telescopes Ultraviolet telescopes Soviet space observatories 1983 in the Soviet Union Spacecraft launched in 1983 {{observatory-stub

See also

References