Can a telescope map the dark universe by looking back ten billion years?
Launched in July 2023, the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission is currently charting the hidden architecture of the cosmos. By observing billions of galaxies across a third of the sky, this telescope aims to reveal the nature of dark energy and dark matter, effectively creating a 3D map of time.
Euclid represents a monumental effort to understand the dark Universe, which remains one of the most significant mysteries in modern astrophysics. The mission, a collaboration led by the European Space Agency with participation from NASA, launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral on 1 July 2023. It is currently positioned at the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2, a stable orbital location situated 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. This vantage point provides the ideal environment for the telescope to conduct its ambitious survey of the extragalactic sky.
The primary objective of Euclid is to investigate how the Universe has expanded and how large-scale structures are distributed across space and time. By capturing light from galaxies as far as 10 billion light-years away, the mission effectively looks back in time to map the evolution of the cosmos. This data is expected to provide critical insights into the role of gravity and the fundamental properties of dark matter and dark energy, which are believed to dominate the composition of the Universe.
The operational timeline for the mission is extensive, involving a six-year survey period. Following an initial phase of testing and calibration, the telescope began its routine observations to measure the shapes of approximately 1.5 billion galaxies and the redshifts of roughly 30 million galaxies. To ensure the scientific community can benefit from these findings, the Euclid NASA Science Center at IPAC supports US-based researchers. Validated data from these observations are scheduled for public release within about two years of acquisition, allowing for a global collaborative effort to decode the geometry of our Universe.
Source: Euclid | Lift-off
