CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A SpaceX rocket launched a brand new space telescope into orbit Saturday (July 1) on a mission to map the “dark universe” like never before.
The European Space Agency observatory, called Euclid, soared to space today aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 11:11 a.m. EDT (1511 GMT) from Space Launch Complex 40 here on the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Spectators here on the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex cheered and applauded because the Falcon 9 booster carried Euclid aloft, with the primary stage handily touching down just eight minutes afterward a drone ship stationed nearby within the Atlantic Ocean.
“We now have a mission,” ESA Director-General Josef Aschbacher said during a live webcast just after liftoff. “I’m so excited for this mission now, knowing its on its technique to Lagrange point 2 … amazing, I’m very joyful and really thrilled.”
The Euclid space observatory, which is designed to search out invisible dark matter and dark energy, separated from its rocket about 41 minutes after liftoff and is now making the journey to the sun-Earth Lagrange point 2, which is roughly 1 million miles (1.5 million km) away from our planet on the alternative side of the sun. Lagrange points are relatively stable orbits where satellites use a minimum of fuel, and Euclid’s destination is a well-liked location: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope also orbits at L2, for instance.
Unveiling the ‘dark universe’
Dark matter and dark energy are believed to make up many of the universe, but we will not see these phenomena in wavelengths of sunshine. Relatively, we will track the dark universe through its effects on other objects. (Gravitational lensing is one example, when an enormous object bends the sunshine of a distant object behind through the force of gravity, bringing otherwise faraway stars or galaxies into sharp focus.)
Cosmologists — scientists studying the history of space — seek to grasp how the dark universe behaves to chart the results of time on our cosmos. The mergers of galaxies, the expansion of the universe and the movements of individual stars are all subject to the forces of dark energy and dark matter.
Euclid will aim its telescope eye to regions outside of the Milky Way, our own galaxy, to map over a 3rd of the “extragalactic” sky. In its six-year mission, the deep space explorer will map billions of targets like galaxies and stars. Euclid’s two instruments, focusing respectively on visible and infrared (heat-seeking) light wavelengths, will record the knowledge for scientists.
The long survey mission will uncover the movements of those distant objects, together with their chemical makeup. From space, Euclid’s sharp eyes will allow for images a minimum of 4 times more clear than what telescopes achieve from the bottom, given the spacecraft will probably be far-off from Earth’s interfering atmosphere and stray light.
Carole Mundell, ESA’s director of science, said the Euclid mission is one 15 years within the making, but still she was holding her breath waiting for signal acquisition after a prefect launch and spacecraft separation.
“In the subsequent six years of this mission, we are going to unravel the mysteries of the dark universe,” Mundell said. “So, an enormous honor to be here. I believe there will be some partying tonight.”
The 1.4 billion Euro ($1.5 billion USD) Euclid has been within the works for nearly twenty years. It was forged from two mission concepts proposed in 2007: Dune (Dark Universe Explorer) and Space (Spectroscopic All Sky Cosmic Explorer), which used different but complementing ways of dark energy. Given how well the 2 missions worked with one another, they were combined into one powerful observatory: Euclid.
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) science program committee chosen Euclid for space in 2011 and formally adopted this system in 2012. The larger Euclid consortium today includes greater than 2,000 scientists from Europe, the U.S. (including NASA), Canada and Japan contributing each instruments and evaluation. Thales Alenia Space was the satellite’s prime contractor, while Airbus Defence and Space contributed the payload module and 4-foot (1.2-meter) telescope.
Euclid’s work follows on from several ground-based and space-based surveys of the universe. Amongst them is the Chilean Victor M. Blanco telescope’s Dark Energy Survey that mapped 100 million galaxies; a 2022 study of that team’s work will function a pathfinder each for Euclid and for NASA’s Roman Space Telescope.
ESA’s still-active Gaia satellite (also at Lagrange Point 2) is one other recent example, having mapped the movements of nearly 2 billion brilliant stars since 2015. Gaia, nonetheless, focuses on the Milky Way and that can make it a complementary mission to Euclid’s deep space focus.
A rocket swap for Euclid
Incidentally, Euclid was not alleged to launch aboard SpaceX in any respect. As late as February 2022, the mission was manifested upon an Arianespace Soyuz (provided by Russia) for a March 2023 launch in French Guiana. Russia’s unsanctioned invasion of Ukraine forced a stop to most such space collaborations other than the International Space Station, pushing Euclid’s team to look for one more ride to space.
Arianespace has been ESA’s launch partner for many years and as a French vendor, it’s the popular route for European space access. Yet there was no room left on the retiring Ariane 5 rocket line, and the brand new Ariane 6 was still in a late stage of development, reported SpaceNews, which was on the meeting.
Even U.S. options were few, as United Launch Alliance’s trusty Atlas V and Delta IV Heavy rockets also had full manifests ahead of their retirement. ULA’s recent Vulcan Centaur is not going to fly until this 12 months a minimum of, leaving SpaceX because the only viable short-term option, in accordance with ESA comments last 12 months.
To get to its recent site, Euclid made its way from Italy to its Floridian launch site under sail. It took roughly two weeks to voyage across the Atlantic by boat, yet just minutes to cross that very same ocean again within the air by rocket.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched Euclid made its second flight to space with this launch. The mission marked SpaceX’s forty fourth mission of 2023 and 243rd mission to this point. It was the also the 204th successful landing of an orbital class rocket by SpaceX.
Euclid will take about 30 days to commute to its deep-space site. Investigators haven’t yet released the date for the primary science image, but say it is going to be in a couple of months.