SPACEX FALCON LAUNCHES EUCLID TELESCOPE TO STUDY DARK MATTER

Sun 02 July 2023:

SpaceX carrier rocket Falcon 9 launched the Euclid space telescope of the European Space Agency (ESA) from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Saturday with the view to studying dark matter and creating the most detailed 3D map of the universe, Elon Musk’s space company said.

The launch took place at 15:11 GMT, a few minutes later the company reported the landing of the first stage rocket and about 40 minutes later confirmed the launch of the telescope into orbit.

“The European spacecraft will spend six years uncovering the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy,” SpaceX said.

New insights from the $1.4bn European Space Agency mission, designed to last at least six years, are expected to transform astrophysics and perhaps understanding of the very nature of gravity itself.

Following a short flight to space, Euclid will be released from the Falcon for a month-long voyage to its destination in solar orbit nearly 1.6 million kilometres (one million miles) from Earth – a position of gravitational stability between the Earth and sun called the 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 as far away as 10 billion light-years from Earth across an immense expanse of the sky beyond our own Milky Way galaxy.

The two-tonne spacecraft is also equipped with instruments designed to measure the intensity and spectrums of infrared light from those galaxies in a way that will precisely determine their distances.

The Euclid telescope was previously expected to be launched on board Russia’s Soyuz ST launch vehicle from the EU’s spaceport in Kourou, in French Guiana in late 2022, but the ESA later decided to conduct the launch with an American company after ceasing cooperation with Roscosmos.

NASA, which contributed Euclid’s infrared detectors, has its own mission coming up to better understand dark energy and dark matter: the Roman Space Telescope due to launch in 2027. The US-European Webb telescope can also join in this quest, officials said.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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