Euclid Space Telescope Launch
The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced that the Euclid space telescope, which will shed light on the dark side of the universe, is scheduled to be launched on Saturday, 1 July at 4:12 PM.
With funding from FCT and through the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA) and the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, over the past 11 years Portugal has contributed critically to the planning of this mission, which will last six years.
This is the first space mission that seeks to understand what is accelerating the expansion of the universe, which may bring some discoveries about the force of gravity. This way, the Euclid space telescope will observe for six years more than a third of the sky – an area almost 100 times larger than the area observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in almost three decades. Two methods of study will be used, namely the deviation of the light path caused by matter in the universe and the clustering of galaxies.
This mission will also make it possible to map the three-dimensional spatial distribution of dark matter in order to build the most extensive and accurate three-dimensional scan of the universe ever undertaken.
Since 2012, Portugal participates in the Euclid Consortium, contributing to the complete planning of the approximately 50,000 observations that will be made by the telescope during the mission. The Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA) and the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon have played a central role in the mission’s tracking group (Euclid Survey Group – ECSURV), having produced the software that generates the schedule of the telescope’s orientations in space and the observation times for the mission calendar.
More information at ESA – Euclid Mission
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