IT'S been 12 years of hard graft and has cost £220m but today a Southampton scientist was due to see it all literally go up in smoke.

Southampton Professor Tony Dean is crossing his fingers as a 57m Russian rocket, carrying an imaging satellite is launched from Kazakhstan.

Due for take-off at 5.41am, Professor Dean and his team from Southampton University's Physics and Astronomy Department were planning to watch via satellite as the rocket accelerates into the outer atmosphere from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.

Black holes, neutron stars and supernovae and exploding stars - are just some of the things the scientists are hoping to discover with this new satellite, which will "open a new window on the Universe."

The launch of the Integral Mission, as it is known, is the culmination of 12 years work by Professor Dean along with scientists in 17 other countries in conjunction with the European Space Agency.

Professor Dean, 60, said: "It has taken 12 years to get the project off the ground but that is a normal time scale for space missions."

"We are hoping to open a new window on the universe.

"Large objects such as black holes, supernovae, neutron stars and any other radioactive material emitting gamma rays are some of the things we are hoping to explore.

"Our knowledge is incomplete and this satellite will enable us to view a deep survey of the whole sky. We never know what we might discover."

The Southampton-based team involved in this latest launch by the European Space Agency, hope to discover new phenomena never before seen by man.

In 1990 Professor Dean, from Sway in the New Forest, proposed the space mission, along with an American colleague, to the European Space Agency and in 1993 ESA agreed to spend 330 million euros to bring the project to fruition.

Professor Dean, who worked on NASA projects in the 1960s, and Dr Tony Bird lead a team of five Southampton University scientists who have helped to design and develop gamma ray detecting instruments on the satellite.

Gamma rays are the most violent emissions from radioactive material produced in space by exploding stars and black holes.

Weighing in at four tonnes, the satellite is the heaviest scientific payload that the European Space Agency has ever put into space and the most sensitive gamma ray observatory ever launched.

Orbiting at a maximum height of 155,000km, the satellite consists of four main instruments, which will provide scientists with a deeper understanding of space:

A gamma ray spectrometer

A high-resolution imager

An X-ray monitor

An optical monitoring camera.

Professor Dean added: "Initially the satellite will be orbiting for two years but it could stay up for as long as ten years."

It is expected that the satellite will become operational in the new year when the first images and results will be beamed back to Earth.