Astron was a Soviet spacecraft launched on 23 March 1983 at 12:45:06 UTC, using Proton launcher, which was designed to fulfill an astrophysics

Astrophysics

Astrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the physics of the universe, including the physical properties of celestial objects, as well as their interactions and behavior...

 mission. It was based on the Venera

Venera

The Venera series probes were developed by the Soviet Union between 1961 and 1984 to gather data from Venus, Venera being the Russian name for Venus...

 spacecraft design and was operational for six years as the largest ultraviolet

Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays, in the range 10 nm to 400 nm, and energies from 3 eV to 124 eV...

 space telescope during its lifetime. The project was headed by Alexander Boyarchuk.

The spacecraft was designed and constructed by the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory

Crimean Astrophysical Observatory

The Crimean Astrophysical Observatory is located in Ukraine. CrAO has been publishing the Bulletin of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory since 1947, in English since 1977. The observatory facilities are located near the settlement of Nauchny since the mid-1950s; before that, they were further...

 and NPO Lavochkin. A group of scientists from these institutions was awarded the USSR State Prize

USSR State Prize

The USSR State Prize was the Soviet Union's state honour. It was established on September 9, 1966. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the prize was followed up by the State Prize of the Russian Federation....

 for their work on Astron.

Astron's payload consisted of an 80 cm ultraviolet

Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays, in the range 10 nm to 400 nm, and energies from 3 eV to 124 eV...

 telescope

Telescope

A telescope is an instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation . The first known practical telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 1600s , using glass lenses...

 which was designed jointly by the USSR and France, and an X-ray

X-ray

X-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...

 spectroscope onboard. Placed into an orbit with an apogee of 185000 kilometres (114,954 mi) it could make observations outside of the Earth's umbra

Umbra

The umbra, penumbra and antumbra are the names given to three distinct parts of a shadow, created by any light source. For a point source only the umbra is cast.These names are most often used to refer to the shadows cast by celestial bodies....

 and radiation belt. Among the most important observations by Astron were those of the SN 1987A

SN 1987A

SN 1987A was a supernova in the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby dwarf galaxy. It occurred approximately 51.4 kiloparsecs from Earth, approximately 168,000 light-years, close enough that it was visible to the naked eye. It could be seen from the Southern...

 supernova on March 4–12, 1987 and of Halley's Comet in December, 1985, that allowed a group of Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 scientists to develop a model of the coma

Coma (cometary)

frame|right|The [[153P/Ikeya-Zhang|comet Ikeya-Zhang]] exhibiting a bright, condensed coma In astronomy, a coma is the nebulous envelope around the nucleus of a comet. It is formed when the comet passes close to the Sun on its highly elliptical orbit; as the comet warms, parts of it sublimate...

 surrounding Halley's Comet.