RadioAstron

RadioAstron was a space radio telescope mission launched by Russia. The primary goal of the mission was to perform very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) with ground-based radio telescopes, creating a virtual telescope with an extremely large effective aperture. This allowed for unprecedented angular resolution, enabling astronomers to study some of the most distant and energetic objects in the universe.

The spacecraft carried a 10-meter radio telescope and was placed in an eccentric orbit around Earth, reaching distances of up to 330,000 kilometers from the planet. This allowed it to observe cosmic radio sources with ground-based telescopes simultaneously. The mission operated from 2011 to 2019, successfully observing a variety of celestial objects including active galactic nuclei, pulsars, and masers. The data collected by RadioAstron provided significant insights into the physics of relativistic jets, the structure of compact radio sources, and the properties of the interstellar medium. The mission represented a major advancement in observational radio astronomy, pushing the boundaries of what could be observed with existing technology.