One million miles (1.5 million kilometres) away, in the general vicinity of the Webb Space Telescope, SpaceX launched the Euclid observatory of the European Space Agency.
On a mission to investigate the enigmatic and intangible area known as the dark universe, a European space telescope launched on Saturday.
One million miles (1.5 million kilometres) away, in the general vicinity of the Webb Space Telescope, SpaceX launched the Euclid observatory of the European Space Agency.
It will take a month to get there and an additional two months before it can begin this fall’s ambitious six-year survey.
After the telescope phoned home after a smooth takeoff, flight controllers in Germany declared success nearly an hour into the flight, cheering and shouting “Yes!”
Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency, said from the Florida launch site, “I’m so thrilled, I’m so excited to see now this mission up in space, knowing it is on its way.
Euclid, named after the Greek mathematician of antiquity, will search through billions of galaxies that make up more than one-third of the sky. Scientists hope to gain understanding of the dark energy and dark matter that make up the majority of the universe and keep it expanding by pinpointing the location and shape of galaxies up to 10 billion light-years away — nearly all the way back to the Big Bang that created the cosmos.
Only the stars, planets, and ourselves are known to science. The rest, according to the science director of the European Space Agency, Carole Mundell, is “still a mystery and an enigma, a huge frontier in modern physics that we hope this mission will actually help to push forward.”
In an effort to shed light on how the dark universe evolved and why its expansion is accelerating, the telescope will produce a highly anticipated 3D map of the cosmos that spans both space and time.
According to the mission’s chief scientist, Euclid will measure dark energy and dark matter with a level of precision never before achieved.
It’s not just a space telescope, Euclid. Rene Laureijs observed, “It’s really a dark energy detector.
Euclid is 15 feet (4.7 metres) tall and almost as wide, and it has two scientific instruments and a 1.2-meter (4-foot) telescope that can observe the cosmos in both visible light and the near infrared. To maintain the sensitive systems at the proper freezing temperatures, a sizable sunshield is designed.
In order to better understand dark energy and dark matter, NASA, which provided Euclid’s infrared detectors, is planning to launch the Roman Space Telescope in 2027. According to officials, the US-European Webb telescope can participate in this effort.
The primary spaceport for Europe, French Guiana in South America, was where Euclid was scheduled to launch on a Russian rocket. Following the invasion of Ukraine last year, the European and Russian space agencies severed their ties, and the telescope switched to a SpaceX flight from Cape Canaveral. According to project manager Giuseppe Racca, waiting for Europe’s next-generation, untested Ariane rocket would have resulted in a delay of more than two years.