The European Space Agency (ESA) is hastily finalizing the Euclid spacecraft for its launch into space in a few months to explore the mysterious phenomena of dark matter and dark energy.
Dark matter and dark energy make up 95% of the universe, yet astronomers still do not fully understand them, a knowledge gap that Euclid project manager Giuseppe Racca refers to as the “shame of the universe.”
To shed light on this dark mystery, ESA’s mission will map 3D representations of two billion galaxies covering more than a third of the sky. With a vision extending 10 billion light-years, the Euclid spacecraft will provide insights into how the universe has evolved over its 13.8 billion-year history.
Euclid spacecraft inside a facility in Cannes, France. (Photo: ESA).
The first images of Euclid were released by ESA this week. The two-ton spacecraft, standing 4.7 meters tall and 3.5 meters wide, is currently quietly resting in a sterile room at the Thales Alenia Space facility in Cannes, southeastern France. However, in just a few months, it will be launched into space to search for dark matter and dark energy.
The Euclid project team is completing some final tests before transferring the spacecraft to Cape Canaveral in the USA for its scheduled launch between July 1 and July 30 on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
Euclid was initially planned to launch on a Russian Soyuz rocket, but last year, Moscow withdrew its launch pads in response to European sanctions related to the conflict in Ukraine, causing delays in the launch.
Like the James Webb Space Telescope, Euclid will be placed in a stable orbit approximately 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, known as the second Lagrangian point (L2) of the Earth-Sun system, where the gravitational forces of the two celestial bodies and the centrifugal force are balanced.
Racca mentioned that ESA’s spacecraft is expected to send back its first images in October, but for more significant discoveries, scientists may take months or even years to sift through the “unprecedented amount of data.”
ESA is completing final tests to launch Euclid in July 2023. (Photo: ESA).
Planned to last at least until 2029, the Euclid mission, valued at $1.5 billion, could be extended for a few more years “if nothing unusual happens.”
Since dark matter cannot be seen with the naked eye, how does Euclid search for it? The answer lies in the very absence of dark matter.
Light from billions of years ago will be slightly distorted on its way by dark matter, a phenomenon scientists refer to as “weak gravitational lensing.”
“By subtracting visible matter, we can calculate the presence of dark matter in between,” Racca explains.
To achieve this, the Euclid spacecraft is equipped with two main instruments: a 1.2-meter telescope and a near-infrared spectrograph (NISP) capable of splitting infrared wavelengths that are invisible to the naked eye.
David Elbaz, an astrophysicist at the French Atomic Energy Commission, noted that one of the distinguishing features of ESA’s spacecraft compared to other space telescopes is its field of view, which is equivalent to “two full moons.”
Scientist Rene Laureijs, who has worked on the project since its proposal stage in 2007, told AFP that this wide field of view will allow Euclid to locate massive structures like black holes that the Webb telescope cannot find due to its “too small field of view.” The data collected by Euclid will guide Webb in the right direction for further investigation.
