Europe’s Euclid space telescope blasted off Saturday, kicking off a first-ever mission to shed light on two of the universe’s greatest mysteries: dark energy and dark matter.
The telescope successfully took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The ESA was forced to turn to billionaire Elon Musk’s firm to launch the mission after Russia pulled its Soyuz rockets in response to sanctions over the war in Ukraine.
After a month-long trip through space, Euclid will join the James Webb Telescope at a stable hovering spot around 1.5 million kilometers (more than 930,000 miles) from Earth called the second Lagrange Point.
From there, Euclid will chart the largest-ever map of the universe, encompassing up to two billion galaxies across more than a third of the sky.
By capturing light that has taken 10 billion years to reach Earth’s vicinity, the map will also offer a new view of the 13.8-billion-year-old universe’s history.
Scientists hope to use information gathered by Euclid to address what project manager Giuseppe Racca calls a “cosmic embarrassment”: that 95 percent of the universe remains unknown to humanity.
Around 70 percent is thought to be made of dark energy, the name given to the unknown force that is causing the universe to expand at an accelerated rate.
And 25 percent is dark matter, thought to bind the universe together and make up around 80 percent of its mass.
Euclid consortium member Guadalupe Canas told a press conference ahead of the launch that the space telescope was a “dark detective” which can reveal more about both elements.
Euclid, which is 4.7 meters (15 feet) tall and 3.5 meters wide, will use two scientific instruments to map the sky.
Its visible light camera will let it measure the shape of galaxies, while its near-infrared spectrometer and photometer will allow it to measure how far away they are.
A major difference between Euclid and other space telescopes is its wide field of view, which takes in an area equivalent to two full moons.
Project scientist Rene Laureijs said that this wider view means Euclid will be able to “surf the sky and find exotic objects,” like black holes, that the Webb telescope can then investigate in greater detail.
The first images are expected once scientific operations start in October, with major data releases planned for 2025, 2027 and 2030.
The 1.4 billion euro ($1.5 billion) mission is intended to run until 2029, but could last a little longer if all goes well.
Roger Barake, with AFP
