| Launch | 1987 |
| Status | Legacy |
| Orbit | Geocentric |
| Space Agency | Roskosmos (progenitor) |
| Type | X-ray (0.04 – 0.62 nm) |
| SRON Contribution | COMIS |
COMIS scanned a number of regions in the sky, notably the Milky Way centre, looking for new X-ray signals from binary systems consisting of a black hole or neutron star and a regular star. In addition, it observed many continuous, bright X-ray stars. COMIS was the prototype of a similar instrument on the BeppoSAX satellite, which was launched nine years later. It offered SRON engineers experience in further developing large proportional counters into mega-pixel X-ray cameras, and in handling data from a coded aperture camera.
COMIS was the only X-ray camera on board the RÖNTGEN observatory. It had a wavelength range in the X-ray spectrum between 0.04 and 0.62 nm and a field of view of 16 x 16 degrees, with a resolution of 2 arcminutes. By comparison, the full moon would then consist of just under 200 pixels.
