GRANAT

Mission Profile

GRANAT was a Soviet/Russian high-energy astrophysics space observatory launched on 1 December 1989 aboard a Proton-K/D-1 into a highly eccentric orbit, carrying instruments from the Soviet Union, France, Denmark, and Bulgaria to study X-ray and gamma-ray sources across the sky. Its main instrument SIGMA was the first coded-aperture telescope in space capable of imaging gamma-ray sources, and it produced the first detailed gamma-ray images of the Galactic Center region revealing concentrated hard X-ray emission from Sgr A* and a population of X-ray binaries. GRANAT also carried the French WATCH all-sky monitor which detected and localized gamma-ray bursts throughout its operational lifetime. The mission operated for nine years until its orbit decayed in 1999, establishing a fruitful model of international astrophysics collaboration between the USSR/Russia and Western European partners.