About the Euclid Space Telescope:
- The Euclid mission is part of ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme,which aims to explore the origin and components of the universe and the fundamental laws that govern it.
- Its main goal is to investigate the "dark side" of the universe, focusing on dark matter and dark energy.
- It was launched on 1 July 2023.
- It is named after the Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria, who lived around 300 BC and founded the subject of geometry.
- The Euclid mission will make a 3D map of the universe (with time as the third dimension) by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years across more than a third of the sky.
- It will reveal how dark energy has influenced the stretching and separation of matter over cosmic time.
- Spacecraft and instruments:
- The Euclid spacecraft is approximately 7 m tall and 3.7 m in diameter. It consists of two major components: the service module and the payload module.
- The payload module comprises a 2-m-diameter telescope and two scientific instruments: a visible-wavelength camera (the VISible instrument, VIS) and a near-infrared camera/spectrometer (the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer, NISP).
- The service module contains the satellite systems: electric power generation and distribution, attitude control, data processing electronics, propulsion, telecommand and telemetry, and thermal control.
- Orbit: Its operational orbit will be a halo around a point known as the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2 (L2), at an average distance of 5 million km beyond Earth’s orbit.
- Lifetime: Nominal mission lifetime is six years, with the possibility of extension (limited by the amount of cold gas used for propulsion).
What is Dark Energy?
- Dark energy is the name given to the mysterious force that’s causing the rate of expansion of our universe to accelerate over time rather than to slow down.
- It is now thought to make up 68% of everything in the universe.
- It's not matter or energy in the conventional sense. It does not interact with electromagnetic forces and, therefore, cannot be observed directly.
