Objective INTEGRAL, the International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory, is an ESA mission to be launched in 2001 with a Russian PROTON. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to that effect has been signed between the European Space Agency and Russia in the fall of 1997. As a result of this, the Russian scientific community will receive approximately 25 % of the INTEGRAL data. This community must, therefore, like the other communities in the world, prepare itself to efficiently analyse and interpret these data.The INTEGRAL Science Data Centre (ISDC), recently created and located near the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland, is the interface between the INTEGRAL scientific payload and the worldwide astronomical community: this centre will process the data to the point where they can be meaningfully interpreted by scientists. The decision of the Russian Academy of Sciences to organize a "local" science data centre for INTEGRAL at the Moscow Space Research Institute (IKI) was taken a long time ago but its practical implementation suffered several delays. In fact, at the end of December 1997, e.g. soon after the signature of the MOU, Academician A.A. Galeev, Director of the Russian Space Research Institute, delivered an order formally initiating such a centre at IKI, with our co-investigator S. Grebenev as Head, Academician R. Sunyaev as supervisor and co-investigator A. Bykov in the Advisory Council. The funding of this center however is not sufficient yet, and may unfortunately be postponed for a little while.There exist excellent high energy astrophysics specialists in Russia, in particular in Moscow and in St. Petersburg: thus to support as soon as possible the setting up of an INTEGRAL Centre in Russia via an INTAS\ESA grant seems very actual, and would undoubtedly lead to excellent scientific results and collaborations between astrophysicists from the ESA member states and those of Russia. This of course implies that the Russian scientists benefiting from the grant will also be expected to significantly contribute to the ISDC software development efforts.Even though the launch scheduled in 2001 seems still ahead, the establishment of a data centre, and particularly the familiarization by the scientists with the complex data, responses and software, including performing scientific simulations require at least the remaining time till launch. INTAS\ESA funding would guarantee the establishment of the Russian Centre and the creation of an efficient international collaboration to work on the joint observing proposals, data processing and model interpretation of the observed objects. Programme(s) IC-INTAS - International Association for the promotion of cooperation with scientists from the independent states of the former Soviet Union (INTAS), 1993- Topic(s) 1A - Nuclear Physics, Astronomy, Astrophysics ESA - ESA Call for proposal Data not available Funding Scheme Data not available Coordinator Institut d'Astrophysique et de Geophysique EU contribution No data Address Allee du 6 Aout 17 - Sart Tilman 4000 Liege Belgium See on map Total cost No data Participants (4) Sort alphabetically Sort by EU Contribution Expand all Collapse all INTEGRAL Science Data Centre ISDC Switzerland EU contribution No data Address Chemin d'Ecogia, 16 1290 Versoix See on map Total cost No data Russian Academy of Sciences Russia EU contribution No data Address Politekhnicheskaya 26 194021 St. Petersburg See on map Total cost No data Russian Academy of Sciences Russia EU contribution No data Address Profsoyuznaya 84/32 117810 Moscow See on map Total cost No data Space Research Organization Netherlands Netherlands EU contribution No data Address Sorbonnelaan, 2 3584 CA Utrecht See on map Total cost No data
