Euclid: Europe’s Mission to the Unknown
On Saturday, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid space telescope embarked on a mission to unravel some of the universe’s greatest mysteries. The 1.2-meter diameter telescope was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida.
Euclid’s destination is the L2 Lagrange point, located nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth between the Sun and the Earth, which also houses NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Euclid will orbit the Sun along with the Earth. Once in orbit, Euclid will spend two months testing and calibrating its instruments before exploring one-third of the sky for the next six years.
The main objective of the Euclid mission is to observe the “dark side” of the universe, specifically dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter, which has never been detected, is believed to make up 85% of the total matter in the universe. Dark energy is a mysterious force believed to be responsible for the universe’s accelerated expansion.
Euclid’s mission is to create the largest and most accurate three-dimensional map of the universe by studying billions of galaxies that extend up to 10 billion light-years away. These observations will allow Euclid to see how the universe has evolved over the past 10 billion years.
The telescope is named after Euclid of Alexandria, a Greek mathematician who lived around 300 BCE and is considered the father of geometry. Although primarily an ESA mission, the telescope also includes contributions from NASA and over 2,000 scientists from 13 European countries, the United States, Canada, and Japan. Euclid’s image quality will be four times sharper than terrestrial sky surveys, and its wide perspective will capture data from a portion of the sky 100 times larger than the Webb telescope’s camera.
During its observations, Euclid will create a catalog of 1.5 billion galaxies and their stars, providing a wealth of data for astronomers, including the shape of each galaxy, its mass, and the number of stars formed each year. Euclid’s ability to observe near-infrared light may also reveal previously unseen objects in our own Milky Way, such as brown dwarfs and ultra-cool stars.
In May 2027, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will join Euclid in its orbit. Both missions will overlap in their study of cosmic acceleration, as they both create three-dimensional maps of the universe. Roman, which will observe in infrared light, will provide greater depth and precision. It will detect galaxies weaker than those visible to Euclid and will also have the capability to search for planets not bound to stars, study exoplanets in our galaxy, and observe objects on the outskirts of our solar system.
“Together, Euclid and Roman will be much more than the sum of their parts,” said Yun Wang, the principal investigator at the California Institute of Technology. “The combination of their observations will give astronomers a better understanding of what is truly happening in the universe.”
Euclid’s mission is a major step forward in our understanding of the universe’s composition, evolution, and the forces that govern it. By studying the dark side of the universe, scientists hope to unravel the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, shedding light on the true nature of our cosmos. With the launch of Euclid, Europe has taken a giant leap into the unknown.
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