(Image source: Space.com)

BY STEVEN SPARKMAN

ANCHOR CHRISTINA HARTMAN

Russia has claimed another space record -- for the largest radio telescope in orbit. And for the next five years, it will deliver an unprecedented view of the universe.

Called Spektr-R, the dish was recently launched into an orbit almost as far away as the moon. When it begins sending back data, it will act as a second antenna to telescopes on Earth -- making the combined resolution as high as if scientists had built a dish 30 times the diameter of our planet. (Video source: Roscosmos)

A writer for Sky and Telescope puts the new device into perspective.

“Spektr-R and large ground-based radio dishes will combine forces to discern details down to 7 micro-arcseconds. If I'm doing the math right, that's effectively good enough to pick out grains of sand on a California beach from a vantage point in New York City!”

That means the project, also called RadioAstron, has thousands of times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope. So what do you do with an eye that large? You look for the invisible. Spaceflight Now explains.

“One of the primary targets the RadioAstron team plans to study is M87, a nearby galaxy that features a jet of matter emanating from a supermassive black hole at its center. … The M87 galaxy is the best opportunity for RadioAstron researchers to image the event horizon, which is large enough to swallow the entire solar system.”

Though it was just launched, the project has been in the making for three decades. It began during the Cold War and was derailed by the collapse of the Soviet Union. It suffered budget cuts and redesigns, and even though they finally got the telescope off the ground, a writer for SmartPlanet says it’s still not smooth sailing.

“...there’s one hopefully temporary hiccup: the amount of data will be enormous … but right now, only one antenna … will be collecting signals from the spacecraft. Until other receiver stations are established, a lot of the telescope’s data will be lost. But RadioAstron’s team is working on setting up other receiver stations. Let’s hope it doesn’t take them another 30 years.”

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Transcript by Newsy.