ESA’s Euclid spacecraft will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in July, mapping billions of galaxies to study the expansion of the universe, gravity, dark matter and dark energy.

ESA’s Euclid spacecraft completed its ocean voyage on April 30 in Port Canaveral, Florida. The satellite was then transported by road to the Astrotech facility near Cape Canaveral.

Euclid will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket before July, before embarking on its 1.5 million-kilometer journey to the L2 Sun-Earth Lagrange point. In Euclidean orbit, it will map billions of galaxies over 10 billion light-years, covering more than one-third of the sky.

Euclid’s cosmic map will help us understand the mysterious components of the universe: dark matter and dark energy. Together they make up 95% of the universe, while ordinary matter that we know and is made of (together with stars, planets and everything else we can see) makes up the remaining 5%.

Astronomers will use Euclid’s observations to study the evolution of the expansion of the universe and the large-scale distribution of galaxies throughout cosmic history. From here we can learn more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark matter and dark energy.