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Description
eROSITA is an X-ray telescope on the Russian-German space mission Spektrum-Röntgen-Gamma. It was launched from the Russian Baikonur Cosmodrome on 13 July 2019 and has been orbiting the Lagrange point Earth-Sun L2 - 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth in the direction of the sun - since October 2019.
The scientific concept of eROSITA was to scan the entire sky eight times over the course of four years in order to discover 100,000 galaxy clusters. This is particularly important as these are the most massive structures in the universe, which can help us track their growth over billions of years and determine the influence of dark matter and dark energy. In addition, we have discovered millions of new X-ray sources, from all kinds of objects in the Milky Way to the active centers of the most distant galaxies.
eROSITA consists of seven identical telescopes: seven Wolter telescopes, each with 54 nested cylindrical mirrors, focusing X-ray light onto seven X-ray sensitive CCD cameras. A complex system of radiators and heat pipes cools the CCDs to temperatures below -80 °C. Nine large electronic boxes are used for data processing, instrument control, and data storage. In addition, there are two star sensors to determine the alignment of the telescope, kilometers of cable, and much more, weighing over 800 kg in total. All of this was designed, developed, built, and tested at MPE.
