After a year of stagnation, preconditioned by failures (loss of automatic stations) and financial problems, Russian research apparatuses are going up to space again. What will be significant for space exploration in 2011? Academician Lev Zelyony, Director of the RAS Institute for Space Research, answered this question in an interview to Dmitry Mysyakov, a correspondent of the Poisk newspaper. He said that a series of very important, even historic, launchings are being prepared now. This summer the national satellite Radioastron will be launched to stretched orbit (with an apogee of 350,000 km). The parabolic mirror of its telescope (10 m in diameter) will first be folded; after the satellite is in orbit, it will open. Together with a global terrestrial network of its "fellows" in Pushchino (Russia), Canberra (Australia) and Green Bank (USA), it will make up a part of a single large-scale interferometric system, which will enable scientists to obtain images of radiosources and measure their coordinates with an accuracy of 8 ppm of the arc. This, in its turn, will help look into the nearest environs of radiogalactic nuclei and "black holes"*, depths of the origination areas of young stars in the Universe. The equipment on board the Radioastron was developed at the Astrocosmic Center of the RAS Institute of Physics named after P. Lebedev under the supervision of Academician Nikolai Kardashev; the satellite itself was designed and produced at the Scientific Production Association named after S. Lavochkin (Khimki, Moscow Region). The scientific community already nicknamed the new radiotelescope "Russian Hubble". As for its accuracy, it will exel its American analog-the automatic observatory Hubble, designed by the NASA and * See: A. Cherepashchuk, "Mysteries of the Universe", Science in Russia, No. 3, 2011.--Ed. the European Space Agency and put into orbit around the Earth in 1990. According to Acad. Zelyony, a small space vehicle lau ... Читать далее