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ESA award for team with participation of IA researchers

The consortium of the Euclid mission, one of the major missions of the European Space Agency(ESA), has awarded the Euclid STAR 2020 prize in the "Team" category to one of the groups in the consortium that counts with the participation of Portugal and the Instituto de Astrofísica (IA).

As part of the mission, the screening group (Euclid Survey Group - ECSURV) was formed in 2012 and has had Portuguese participation since the beginning, currently including four members from IA, in addition to nine other members from Italy and France. The group was nominated for the Euclid STAR 2020 - Teams award by the Euclid consortium community, which brings together about 1500 members from 14 European countries, the United States and Canada.

The Euclid mission is a telescope that will peer into the dark side of the Universe and is scheduled to launch in 2022. The ECSURV group is tasked with producing the sky-mapping schedule of about 40,000 observations from the Euclid telescope, defining which region of the sky it will observe at any given time during the six-plus year mission.

The participation in this European mission counted with the support of FCT and, more recently, of the PT SPACE Agency.

These awards began in 2017 and are symbolic in nature, annually recognizing outstanding contributions to the mission made by consortium members or groups. Awards have also been given in the categories of student, junior engineer, junior scientist, senior member, and coordination.