ROSAT
| Names | ROSAT |
|---|---|
| Mission type | Space Telescope |
| Operator | DLR / NASA |
| COSPAR ID | 1990-049A |
| SATCAT no. | 20638 |
| Website | www |
| Mission duration | 8 years and 4 months |
| Spacecraft properties | |
| Launch mass | 2,421 kilograms (5,337 lb) |
| Start of mission | |
| Launch date | 21:48:00, June 1, 1990 |
| Rocket | Delta II 6920-10 |
| Launch site | Cape Canaveral LC-17A |
| End of mission | |
| Decay date | 23:00:00, October 23, 2011 |
| Orbital parameters | |
| Reference system | Geocentric |
| Eccentricity | 0 |
| Perigee | 580 km (360 mi) |
| Apogee | 580 km (360 mi) |
| Inclination | 53° |
| Period | 96 min |
| Epoch | 1990-06-01 |
| Main | |
| Type | Wolter I |
| Diameter | 84 centimetres (33 in) |
| Focal length | 240 centimetres (94 in) |
| Wavelengths | 30-0.06 nm, X-rays and Extreme Ultraviolet |
| Resolution | 5 arc-s at half energy width |
| Instruments | |
| Position Sensitive Proportional Counter Wide Field Camera High Resolution Imager |
|
ROSAT (short for Röntgensatellit, in German X-rays are called Röntgenstrahlen, in honour of Wilhelm Röntgen) was a German Aerospace Center-led satellite X-ray telescope, with instruments built by West Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. It was launched on 1 June 1990, on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral, on what was initially designed as an 18-month mission, with provision for up to five years of operation. ROSAT actually operated for over eight years, finally shutting down on 12 February 1999.
In February 2011, it was reported that the 2,400 kg (5,291 lb) satellite was unlikely to burn up entirely while re-entering the Earth's atmosphere due to the large amount of ceramics and glass used in construction. Parts as heavy as 400 kg (882 lb) could impact the surface intact. ROSAT eventually re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on 23 October 2011.
According to NASA, the Roentgensatellit (ROSAT) was a joint German, U.S. and British X-ray astrophysics project. ROSAT carried a German-built imaging X-ray Telescope (XRT) with three focal plane instruments: two German Position Sensitive Proportional Counters (PSPC) and the US-supplied High Resolution Imager (HRI). The X-ray mirror assembly was a grazing incidence four-fold nested Wolter I telescope with an 84-cm diameter aperture and 240-cm focal length. The angular resolution was less than 5 arcsecond at half energy width (the "angle within which half of the electromagnetic radiation" is focused). The XRT assembly was sensitive to X-rays between 0.1 and 2 keV (one thousand Electronvolt).
In addition, a British-supplied extreme ultraviolet (XUV) telescope, the Wide Field Camera (WFC), was coaligned with the XRT and covered the energy band from 0.042 to 0.21 keV (30 to 6 nm).
ROSAT's unique strengths were high spatial resolution, low-background, soft X-ray imaging for the study of the structure of low surface brightness features, and for low-resolution spectroscopy.
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