MOSCOW, August 19 (RIA Novosti) - A Russian-German orbital observatory set for launch in 2012 will help scientists to study the role of "dark matter" in the structure and the evolution of the universe, a Russian research institute said on Wednesday.

Russia's Federal Space Agency and the German Aerospace Center signed on Tuesday an agreement on the launch of the German eROSITA X-ray telescope and the Russian ART-XC device on board the Russian Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) satellite.

"As a result of the joint SRG mission, we are expecting to find about 100,000 new galaxy clusters and over 3 million new active galaxy cores, which may contain ultra-massive black holes," the institute said in a statement.

The telescopes will be launched into orbit in 2012 from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on board a Soyuz carrier rocket, the Moscow-based Institute for Space Research said.

The observatory will use the most sensitive to date high-energy mirror detectors to survey about 100,000 galaxy clusters in the search for dark matter, which is undetectable but necessary to explain observed phenomena in the universe and currently accepted cosmological theories.

The discovery of new dark matter sources will help astronomers to create a more precise model of the structure and the evolution of the universe, the statement said.