European and Russian specialists recently worked together to catch signals from an astrophysical observatory mission called Spektr-RG, now mapping X-ray sources in our galaxy and beyond, discovering previously unknown supermassive #blackholes

http://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/ESA_listens_in_on_black_hole_mission

The Spektr-RG astrophysical observatory was developed by Roscosmos with participation from Germany led by the German Aerospace Center @DLR_en. This spring, Russian ground stations normally used to communicate with Spektr-RG were in unfavourable geographic positions ...

So, experts from ESA’s #Estrack ground station network stepped in. ESA’s three 35 m dish antennas, located in Australia, Spain and Argentina, were used to establish a series of 16 communication passes with Spektr-RG, downloading 6.5 GB of science data

#SpaceOnEarth

This was the first time the Agency's ground stations have collected scientific data from a Russian spacecraft, demonstrating how ESA and @roscosmos' technologies can work together and showcasing the ‘interoperability’ of the two space agencies

#DeepSpaceCooperation