The ESA Euclid space telescope is scheduled for launch today at 11:12 a.m. EDT from Kennedy Space Center on a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle.
Euclid is a space telescope designed to explore the dark Universe. It will make a 3D-map of the cosmos (with time as the third dimension) by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, across more than a third of the sky. In doing so, Euclid will tackle some of the most fundamental questions in cosmology – questions like:
- How did the Universe originate?
- Why is the Universe expanding at an accelerating rate?
- What is the nature of dark matter?
- What is dark energy?
Weather forecast is good —
Details
Location: Lissajous orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point, 1.5 million km away from Earth (similar to JWST)
Telescope: 1.2 meter three-mirror Korsch type telescope.
Instruments: The visible imager (VIS) instrument and the Near Infrared Spectro-Photometer (NISP). See graphic below for details.
Overview of Euclid science -
What is dark matter/energy?
Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for the “missing mass” in the universe. Dark matter is called "dark" because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation and is, therefore, difficult to detect.
Dark energy is a hypothetical form of energy that is proposed by physicists to explain why the universe is not just expanding but is doing so at an accelerating rate.
Roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe. science.nasa.gov/…
Euclid’s journey to the launch pad
Euclid traveled from Cannes, France to Savona, Italy by truck and then sailed to Cape Canaveral in Florida, on the MN Colibri, the same ship that had transported the Webb Telescope from L.A. to Kourou, French Guiana.
Webcast:
Links
- Euclid- Exploring the dark Universe — www.esa.int/…
- Euclid overview — www.esa.int/…
- www.eoportal.org/...