On July 22, 2019, NPO Lavochkin (part of the Roscosmos State Space Corporation) Spektr-RG spacecraft control group performed the first scheduled orbit correction maneuver of the spacecraft.

The correction included giving two impulses to Spektr-RG propulsion system during a 4-hour interval. The operation was successful; all the spacecraft systems function as planned. The spacecraft continues its journey towards the L2 Sun – Earth system libration point, where it is to carry out explorations to answer some questions important for the world scientific society:

• What is the history of dark matter influence on the large-scale Universe structure forming;
• What is the cosmological evolution of supermassive black holes?

The Spektr-RG spacecraft was created in cooperation with Germany as part of Russia’s Federal Space Program on behalf of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The space observatory is equipped with two unique X-ray telescopes: ART-XC (Russia) and eROSITA (Germany), its functioning based on oblique incidence principle. The telescopes are installed on the Navigator platform (NPO Lavochkin, Russia), which had been adapted to meet the project tasks.

Mission scientific coordinator: academic Rashid Syunyayev; ART-XC telescope scientific supervisor: Doctor of Physics and Mathematics Mikhail Pavlinskiy; eROSITA telescope scientific supervisor: Dr. Peter Predel.