Launch of the Euclid Space Telescope

The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced that the Euclid space telescope is scheduled to launch on Saturday, July 1, at 4:12 p.m. Portuguese mainland time, which will shed light on the dark side of the universe.

With funding from FCT and through the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA) and the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Portugal has made a critical contribution to the planning of this six-year mission over the last 11 years.

This is the first space mission that seeks to understand what is accelerating the expansion of the Universe, which could lead to some discoveries about the force of gravity. The Euclid space telescope will observe more than a third of the sky for six years—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 light caused by matter in the universe and the agglomeration of galaxies.

This mission will also enable the three-dimensional spatial distribution of dark matter to be mapped, in order to construct the most extensive and accurate three-dimensional survey of the Universe ever undertaken.

Since 2012, Portugal has been part of the Euclid Consortium, helping to plan all the observations that the telescope will make during the mission, which is about 50,000. 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 survey group (Euclid Survey Group – ECSURV), producing the software that generates the schedule for the telescope's orientation in space and the observation times for the mission calendar.

More information at ESA – Euclid Mission

Photo: ©ESA