SEE IT: Russia launches new large telescope in space after delays

MOSCOW – A Russian Proton-M rocket successfully launched a state-of-the-art space telescope on Saturday after several days of launch delay, the Russian Space Agency said.

Roscosmos said the telescope, named Spektr-RG, had been delivered into a parking orbit before a final fire on Saturday, which propelled the satellite out of its Earth orbit until its final destination: the Lagrange L2 point.

Lagrange points are unique positions in the solar system where objects can maintain their position relative to the sun and planets in orbit. Located 0.93 million miles from Earth, the L2 is particularly suitable for telescopes such as Spektr-RG.

If all goes well, the telescope will reach its expected position in three months and become the first Russian spacecraft to operate beyond the Earth's orbit since the Soviet era. The telescope aims to achieve a complete study of the X-ray sky by 2025, the first space telescope to do so.

The Russian production comes as NASA, the US space agency, celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing on July 20, 1969.

Russian space science missions have suffered greatly since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Budget cuts have forced the Russian space program to focus more on commercial efforts.

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A Russian Mars probe, called Mars 96, did not leave Earth's orbit in 1996. A subsequent attempt to send a probe to Mars, called Fobos-Grunt, suffered the same fate in 2011.

Work on the Spektr-RG telescope began in the 1980s but was abandoned in the 1990s. Spektr-RG was relaunched in 2005 and redesigned to become smaller, simpler and cheaper.

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In its modern form, the project is a close collaboration between Russian and German scientists, both of whom have installed telescope equipment aboard the Russian spacecraft.