Take off on a mission destined to unravel the greatest mysteries of the universe

() — A mission designed to unravel some of the greatest mysteries in the universe has taken off.

The Euclid space telescope of the European Space Agency (ESA) lifted off this Saturday at 11:12 am (Miami time) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral space station in Florida.

Mission control received a signal from the telescope at around 11:57 am (Miami time).

The 1.2-meter-diameter telescope is on a month-long journey toward its orbital destination, the L2 Lagrange point between the Sun and Earth, which is nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) ) from Earth and is also home to NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Euclid will keep pace with Earth as our planet orbits the Sun.

Once in orbit, Euclid will spend two months testing and calibrating its instruments – a visible-light camera and a near-infrared camera/spectrometer – before scanning a third of the sky over the next six years.

Investigate cosmic mysteries

Euclid’s main goal is to observe the “dark side” of the universe, that is, dark matter and dark energy.

Although dark matter has never been detected, it is believed to make up 85% of the total matter in the universe. For its part, dark energy is a mysterious force that is believed to be involved in the accelerated expansion of the universe.

In the 1920s, astronomers Georges Lemaître and Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe has been expanding since its birth 13.8 billion years ago. But research that began in the 1990s shows that something caused an acceleration in the expansion of the universe about 6 billion years ago, and the cause remains a mystery.

Unraveling the true nature of dark matter and energy could help astronomers understand what the universe is made of, how its expansion has changed over time, and whether gravity is more complex than it seems. Both dark matter and dark energy also play a role in the distribution and movement of objects, such as galaxies and stars, through the cosmos.

Euclid is designed to create the largest and most accurate three-dimensional map of the universe, by observing billions of galaxies stretching out to 10 billion light-years to reveal how matter can be stretched and pulled apart by dark energy over time. These observations will allow Euclid to see how the universe has evolved in the last 10 billion years.

The telescope was named in honor of Euclid of Alexandria, a Greek mathematician who lived around 300 BC and is considered the father of geometry. Although primarily an ESA mission, the telescope includes contributions from NASA and more than 2,000 scientists from 13 European countries, the United States, Canada and Japan.

The telescope’s image quality will be four times sharper than terrestrial sky surveys. Euclid’s wide perspective can also record data from 100 times more of the sky than Webb’s camera can capture.

During its observations, the telescope will create a catalog of 1.5 billion galaxies and the stars they contain, providing astronomers with a treasure trove of data including the shape of each galaxy, its mass, and the number of stars being created as it goes on. anus. Euclid’s ability to see in near-infrared light could also reveal objects never before seen in our own Milky Way, such as brown dwarfs and ultracool stars.

a dynamic duo

In May 2027, the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope will join Euclid in its orbit. The two missions will overlap in their study of cosmic acceleration, as both will create three-dimensional maps of the universe.

“Twenty-five years after its discovery, the accelerating expansion of the universe remains one of the most pressing mysteries in astrophysics,” Jason Rhodes, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

“With these new telescopes, we will measure dark energy in different ways and with much more precision than ever before, ushering in a new era of exploration of this mystery,” said Rhodes, Roman’s associate project scientist and Euclid’s chief scientist at USA.

Roman will study one twentieth of the sky in infrared light, allowing for greater depth and precision. The Roman telescope will go back to the time when the universe was only 2 billion years old by detecting galaxies fainter than Euclid can see.

Roman will also be able to hunt for planets not attached to stars, search for exoplanets in our galaxy, and study objects located on the outskirts of our solar system.

“Together, Euclid and Roman will be much more than the sum of their parts,” Yun Wang, a principal investigator at the California Institute of Technology, said in a statement. “The combination of their observations will give astronomers a better idea of ​​what is really going on in the universe.”