Euclid Telescope will explore the hidden side of the universe – 06/21/2023 – Science

The European space telescope Euclid will be launched on the 1st to try to unravel two great riddles of the universe, dark matter and dark energy. The European Space Agency (ESA) made the announcement via Twitter this Wednesday (21).

The satellite, which will leave Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States, will be carried by a Falcon 9 rocket, from the American company SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk.

Conceived by Thales Alenia Space, the two-ton satellite, 4.7 meters high and 3.5 meters long, will be positioned close to the James Webb Space Telescope, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

From the so-called Lagrange 2 point, Euclid —named after the father of geometry, the Greek Euclid— will project a three-dimensional map of the universe, which will encompass 2 billion galaxies, covering a third of the celestial vault.

This unprecedented cartography aims to reconstruct the history of the universe “by portions of time”, explained astrophysicist Yannick Mellier, from the Euclid consortium, in a press conference held on the 13th of this month.

The idea is to better understand dark matter and dark energy, which make up 95% of the universe, but whose nature is completely unknown.

Both are invisible and, so far, purely theoretical, but scientists need these components to understand the cosmos.

The hypothesis is that dark matter would act as a cement inside galaxies, which would explain why they do not disperse in clouds of stars. Dark energy is needed to explain the accelerated expansion of the universe.

With this mission, astronomers hope to learn more about how both act and evolve over time.