Calay News
The European Space Agency (ESA) announced Wednesday that the Euclid space telescope will be launched on July 1 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with the aim of investigating two great enigmas of the universe: dark matter and dark energy. The satellite will be carried on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Designed by Thales Alenia Space, the spacecraft weighs two tons, has a height of 4.7 meters, and a length of 3.5 meters. It will be located near the James Webb Space Telescope, at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, at a point known as Lagrange 2.
From this position, Euclid, named after the Greek mathematician Euclid, will generate a three-dimensional map of the universe covering 2 billion galaxies, covering a third of the sky, and going back in time up to 10 billion years.
The goal of this unprecedented mapping is to reconstruct the history of the universe in time slices. According to Yannick Mellier, an astrophysicist with the Euclid consortium, the idea is to unravel the mysteries surrounding dark matter and dark energy, which make up 95% of the universe and whose nature is still unknown because they are not visible.
Scientists theorize that dark matter acts as a “cement” inside galaxies, preventing them from dispersing into clouds of stars. On the other hand, dark energy is needed to explain the accelerating expansion of the universe.
With this mission, astronomers hope to gain a better understanding of how these components interact and evolve over time. Euclid will provide invaluable information that will contribute to the advancement of our knowledge about the universe and its structure, helping to solve one of science’s greatest enigmas.
