Cape Canaveral, Fla. — A SpaceX rocket launched a new space telescope into orbit Saturday (July 1) on a mission to map the “dark universe” like never before.
The European Space Agency’s observatory, called Euclid, rose into space today aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 11:11 a.m. EDT (1511 GMT) from Space Launch Complex 40 here at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Spectators here at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex cheered and applauded as the Falcon 9 booster carried Euclid aloft, with the first stage landing easily after just eight minutes on a drone ship stationed nearby in the Atlantic Ocean.
“We have a mission,” ESA Director General Josef Ashbacher said during a live webcast just after liftoff. “I’m so excited about this mission right now, knowing it’s on its way to the 2 Lagrangian point… amazing, I’m so excited, so excited.”
“I am absolutely hooked, a launch junkie,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for science at NASA, at a press conference here after the launch on Saturday (July 1). “It is the most exciting day to realize all the work, all the teams, all the thousands of people who put their lives into this mission and to see this journey today.”
The Euclid Space Observatory, designed to search for invisible dark matter and dark energy, separated from its rocket about 41 minutes after liftoff and is now making a trip to the Sun-Earth’s Lagrangian point 2, which is about a million miles (1.5 million km) from our planet on Earth. the other side of the sun. Lagrangian points are relatively stable orbits where satellites use minimal fuel, and the Euclid destination is a common location: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, for example, orbits at L2.
Related: We’ve never seen dark matter and dark energy. Does it really exist?
Unveiling the “dark universe”
Dark matter and dark energy are thought to make up most of the universe, but we cannot see these phenomena at wavelengths of light. Instead, we can trace the dark universe through its effect on other things. (Gravitational lensing is one example, when a massive object bends the light of a distant object behind it through the force of gravity, which would otherwise focus distant stars or galaxies into sharp focus.)
Cosmologists — scientists who study the history of space — seek to understand how the dark universe behaves to map the effects of time on our universe. Galaxy mergers, the expansion of the universe, and the motions of individual stars are all subject to the forces of dark energy and dark matter.
Carole Mundell, director of science at the European Space Agency, added at the press conference that one of her priorities is making sure there is a robust data archive that will survive even after Euclid’s six years of science collecting.
Describing herself as a “guardian” for having just assumed the position of director, she said she would rather hand any baton of congratulations “to all of our scientific communities who will now work so hard to entrust this task.”
Euclid would point his telescopic eye at regions outside the Milky Way, our galaxy, to map more than a third of the “extragalactic” sky. In its six-year mission, the deep space explorer will map billions of targets such as galaxies and stars. Euclid’s two instruments, which focus respectively on visible and infrared wavelengths of light (which look for heat), will record the information for scientists.
A long survey mission will reveal the movements of these distant objects, along with their chemical makeup. From space, Euclid’s sharp eyes would allow for images at least four times sharper than what telescopes can achieve from Earth, since the spacecraft will be farther away from Earth’s interfering atmosphere and stray light.
The Euclid mission is 15 years old, said Carol Mundell, director of science at the European Space Agency, but she is still holding her breath waiting for the signal after the launch of the governor and the separation of the spacecraft.
“In the next six years of this mission, we will unravel the mysteries of the dark universe,” Mundell said. “So, it’s such an honor to be here. I think there will be some parties tonight.”
Related: The Euclid spacecraft will change our view of the dark universe
€1.4 billion (US$1.5 billion) Euclid has been in business for nearly two decades. were forged from Two important concepts It was proposed in 2007: Dune (Dark Universe Explorer) and Space (Spectroscopic All Sky Cosmic Explorer), which used different but complementary approaches to looking at dark energy. Given how well the two missions worked together, they were combined into one powerful observatory: Euclid.
The European Space Agency (ESA) Science Program Committee selected Euclid for space in 2011 and formally approved the program in 2012. Today the larger Euclid consortium has more than 2,000 scientists from Europe, the United States (including NASA), Canada and Japan contributing both instrumentation and analysis. Thales Alenia Space was the prime contractor for the satellite, while Airbus Defense and Space contributed the payload module and the 4-foot (1.2-meter) telescope.
Euclid’s work follows many terrestrial and space surveys of the universe. Among them is the Dark Energy Survey by Chile’s Victor M. Blanco Telescope which has mapped 100 million galaxies. A 2022 study of this team’s work will be an explorer for both Euclid and NASA’s Roman Space Telescope.
The European Space Agency’s still-active Gaia satellite (also at Lagrange Point 2) is another recent example, mapping the motions of nearly two billion bright stars since 2015. However, Gaia is focused on the Milky Way and this would make it a complementary mission. Euclid’s focus is on deep space.
Rocket Exchange for Euclid
Incidentally, Euclid wasn’t supposed to fly off on SpaceX at all. In late February 2022, the mission appeared on Arianespace Soyuz (provided by Russia) for launch in March 2023 in French Guiana. Russia’s unauthorized invasion of Ukraine forces a halt to most space collaborations except for the International Space Station, prompting Euclid’s team to search for another flight into space.
Arianespace has been an ESA launch partner for decades and as a French vendor it is the preferred route to European space access. However, there was no room left in the retired Ariane 5 line of missiles, and the new Ariane 6 was still at a late stage of development, SpaceNews reportedwho was at the meeting.
Even American options were few, as the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V and Delta IV Heavy rockets also had full data before they were retired. ULA’s new Vulcan Centaur won’t fly until at least this year, leaving SpaceX as the only viable option in the short term, according to comments from the European Space Agency last year.
To reach his new location, Euclid made his way from Italy to the launch site in Florida under sail. It took nearly two weeks to travel across the Atlantic by boat, but only minutes later to cross the same ocean again in the air by rocket.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched Euclid made its second trip into space with this launch. The mission marks SpaceX’s 44th mission of 2023 and the 243rd mission to date. This was also the 204th successful landing of an orbital-class rocket by SpaceX.
It would take Euclid about 30 days to travel to his location in deep space. The investigators have not yet announced the date of the first scientific image, but they say it will be in a few months.
This story was updated at 2:08 PM EST with information from the post-launch press conference.
Coverage by Elizabeth Howell in Florida was jointly sponsored by Canadian Geographic and Canada’s University of Waterloo, where Euclid’s primary science coordinator (Will Percival) is based. Space.com has independent control of news coverage.
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