Launch of Europe's Euclid Space Telescope to Explore The Dark Universe | SpaceX

Launch of Europe's Euclid Space Telescope to Explore The Dark Universe | SpaceX

The European Space Agency’s latest astrophysics mission, Euclid, was successfully launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA, at 11:12 am ET on July 1, 2023. Euclid has now started its month-long journey to Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2, located 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, in the opposite direction from the Sun. The space telescope will survey one third of the sky with unprecedented accuracy and sensitivity. By observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, it will create the most extensive 3D-map of the Universe, with the third dimension representing time.

The European Space Agency’s Euclid Mission is designed to explore the composition and evolution of the dark Universe. Euclid will chart how the Universe has expanded and how large-scale structure is distributed across space and time, revealing more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter.

Four weeks after launch, Euclid will enter its orbit around L2. Once in orbit, mission controllers will start the activities to verify all functions of the spacecraft, check out the telescope and finally turn the instruments on.

Following this, scientists and engineers will be engaged in an intense two-month phase of testing and calibrating Euclid’s scientific instruments, and preparing for routine observations. The telescope begins its early phase of the survey of the Universe three months after launch.

Find out more about the Euclid Mission: 

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Euclid

Image Credit: SpaceX

Release Date: July 1, 2023

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