Global Courant
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A European space telescope set out on Saturday on a search for the mysterious and unseen realm known as the dark universe.
SpaceX launched the European Space Agency’s Euclid Observatory toward its final destination, 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away, near the Webb Space Telescope. It will take a month to get there and another two months before it begins its ambitious six-year survey this fall.
Flight controllers in Germany declared success almost an hour into the flight, applauding and shouting “Yes!” as the telescope called home after a smooth launch.
“I’m so excited, I’m so excited to see this mission in space now, knowing it’s on its way,” European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher said from the Florida launch site.
Euclid, named after the ancient Greek mathematician, will search billions of galaxies covering more than a third of the sky. By pinpointing the location and shape of galaxies as far as 10 billion light-years away — almost all the way back to the cosmos-creating Big Bang — scientists hope to gain insight into the dark energy and dark matter that make up most of the universe and continue to expand.
Scientists understand only 5 percent of the universe: stars, planets, us. The rest is “still a mystery and an enigma, a huge frontier in modern physics that we hope this mission will actually advance,” European Space Agency science director Carole Mundell said just before launch.
The telescope’s highly anticipated 3D map of the cosmos will span both space and time in an attempt to explain how the dark universe has evolved and why its expansion is accelerating.
The lead scientist for the $1.5 billion mission said Euclid will measure dark energy and dark matter with unprecedented precision.
‘It’s more than a space telescope, Euclid. It really is a dark energy detector,” notes Rene Laureijs.
Fifteen feet (4.7 meters) long and nearly as wide, Euclid has a 1.2-meter (4-foot) telescope and two science instruments capable of observing the cosmos in both visible light and near-infrared. A huge sunshade is designed to keep the sensitive systems at the right frigid temperatures.
NASA, who contributed Euclid’s infrared detectors, has its own mission ahead to better understand dark energy and dark matter: the Roman Space Telescope due to launch in 2027. The US-European Webb Telescope may also join this search, officials said.
Euclid would launch a Russian rocket from French Guiana in South America, Europe’s main spaceport. The European and Russian space agencies cut ties after last year’s invasion of Ukraine, and the telescope moved on to a SpaceX ride from Cape Canaveral. According to project manager Giuseppe Racca, waiting for Europe’s next-generation, yet-to-fly Ariane rocket would have meant a delay of more than two years.
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