On Saturday, July 1, ESA’s Euclidean Space Telescope was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. This next-generation astrophysics mission will spend the next few weeks flying to the L2 Earth-Sun Lagrange point, where it will spend the next six years observing a third of the sky. During this time, Euclid will observe billions of galaxies 10 billion light-years away, revealing the most comprehensive 3D map of the universe ever created. This map will help astronomers and cosmologists unravel the age-old mystery of dark matter and dark energy (DM & DE).

The mission was launched at 11:12 ET (08:12 PST) aboard a SpaceX rocket. Falcon 9, broke into the second stage after about 2 minutes 45 seconds. After approximately 3 minutes 37 seconds, the payload skins were separated. Forty-five minutes after launch, ground controllers received confirmation. Euclid It left the second stage and entered low Earth orbit (LEO). Over the next two weeks, Euclid will open its sunshield and reach operating temperature before moving to L2 on July 29 (four weeks after launch).

Using his 600-megapixel camera, near-infrared spectrometer, and a photometer (which measures the redshift of galaxies), Euclid will show how the universe has expanded in the last 10 billion years (~3 billion years after the Big Bang). Now. . This coincides with the beginning of the “era of dark energy dominance,” when the universe began to expand at a gradual pace. By mapping the large-scale cosmic structure of the universe and how it has changed since then, Euclid will reveal more about the role of gravity, dark matter and dark energy in space and time.

Understanding the interaction of these forces is vital to resolving the current “cosmology crisis.” This includes the spin curves of galaxies and how they don’t correspond to the amount of visible (“bright”) matter they contain. Scientists realized this in the 1960s, leading to the theory that 85% of the galaxy’s mass is made up of mysterious, invisible matter (hence the term “dark”). Speculation about the existence of dark energy began in the 1990s, mainly thanks to the Hubble and Deep Fields campaigns.

As scientists looked deeper into space (and thus back in time), they noticed that cosmic expansion has accelerated over the past four billion years. Combined with the unsolved mystery of dark matter, this suggests either that our theories about gravity (as defined in general relativity) are wrong, or that an unknown force is responsible for opposing gravity on the largest scales. Based on the most common cosmological model, the lambda-cold dark matter model (LCDM), cosmologists estimate that dark energy accounts for about 72% of the mass-energy density in the universe.

By measuring the effects of dark matter and dark energy, Euclid will help put an end to the current debate about prevailing cosmological theories. When “Euclidean” reaches L2, here James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), mission controllers will begin controlling all spacecraft functions, testing the telescope, and finally turning on the instruments. This will be followed by a two-month phase where Euclid will test and calibrate each of his science instruments and prepare for the telescope’s first observations. Three months after launch, mission controllers will begin the first phase of Euclid’s space imaging. Source