A European-made orbital satellite has taken off from Florida on a quest to hunt for mysterious cosmic phenomena known as dark energy and dark matter, the invisible forces that scientists say make up 95 percent of the known universe.
The Euclid telescope, named after the ancient Greek mathematician known as the “father of geometry,” was airborne in the cargo bay of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that lifted off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Saturday. New findings from the European Space Agency’s $1.4 billion mission, which is expected to last at least six years, are expected to change astrophysics and perhaps the understanding of the very nature of gravity itself.
After a short flight into space, Euclid will be launched from the Falcon on a lunar cruise to a destination in solar orbit nearly 1.6 million kilometers (one million miles) from Earth—a position of gravitational stability between Earth and the Sun called Lagrange Point Two, or L2.
From there, Euclid is designed to explore the evolution of what astrophysicists refer to as the “dark universe,” using a wide-angle telescope to survey galaxies up to 10 billion light-years from Earth across the vast expanse of sky beyond our planet. own Milky Way galaxy.
The two-ton spacecraft is also equipped with instruments designed to measure the intensity and spectrum of infrared light from these galaxies in a way that will pinpoint their distances. “It’s more than a space telescope, Euclid. It’s really a dark energy detector,” noted Rene Laureijs.
The mission focuses on two fundamental components of the dark universe. One is dark matter, the invisible but theoretically influential cosmic scaffolding that gives shape and structure to the universe.
The other is dark energy, an equally mysterious force believed to explain why the expansion of the universe, as scientists learned in the 1990s, has long been accelerating.
NASA, which contributed the Euclid infrared detectors, has its own mission to better understand dark energy and dark matter: the Rome Space Telescope, due to launch in 2027. The U.S.-European Webb Telescope may also join the search, officials said.
Euclid was supposed to launch on 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 to SpaceX from Cape Canaveral.
According to project manager Giuseppe Racco, waiting for Europe’s next-generation Ariane rocket, which is yet to fly, would mean a delay of more than two years.
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