The German Aerospace Centre, DLR, and the Russian space agency, Roskosmos, have signed an agreement at MAKS-2009 to collaborate on the extended Roentgen survey with an imaging telescope array (eROSITA) X-ray telescope project.

The German X-ray telescope in construction since 2007 consists of seven individual mirror systems with apertures for radiation ingress and 54 nested mirror shells each to scan the whole sky simultaneously.

The eROSITA X-ray telescope will fly into space on-board a Russian Spektrum Roentgen Gamma (SRG) satellite to search for black holes and dark matter using its seven electronic eyes.

The array uses a charge-coupled device developed for the ROSITA is placed at the focal point of each X-ray mirror system, which must be cooled to a temperature of below minus 80°C during operation.

The agreement between DLR and Roskosmos set out all the organisational and technical boundary conditions for the project.

The telescope on-board the Russian satellite will be put into orbit by a Soyuz-Fregat rocket in 2012.