A JOURNEY TO THE DARK UNIVERSE /
MISSION
MISSION
A JOURNEY TO THE DARK UNIVERSE
ESA’s Euclid mission is designed to map the large-scale structure of the Universe and help understand its two biggest mysteries: dark matter and dark energy.
Only 5% of the Universe is made up of visible matter.
THE MYSTERIES EUCLID WILL HELP TO SOLVE
What is the history and structure of the cosmic web?
How is the expansion of the Universe changing over time?
What is the nature of dark matter?
Is our understanding of gravity complete?
What is the nature of dark energy?
WHY EUCLID?
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The Universe, as we know it today, originated about 13 billion years ago from an event called the Big Bang. Often identified as an "explosion", the Big Bang can be better described as a rapid expansion of Space.
The matter contained in that single point from which everything originated, the initial "singularity", began to expand and growinvade the sSpace, that expanded with it, gradually forming the set of structures observed in today's Universe.
But what has controlled the expansion of the Universe from the Big Bang to today?
Only very recently has it been possible to determine that, even today, the Universe is in a phase of accelerated expansion, in which the speed of expansion is increasing over time.
Therefore, the standard model, which predicted a slowdown of the expansion due to gravity, was revised by introducing the presence of a repulsive energy - dark energy - capable of counteracting the effects of gravity.
Dark energy represents about 705% of the energy content of the current Universe. Together with dark matter, it constitutes the dominant part of the content of the Universe. Both are of still unknown nature but control the past, present and future evolution of the Universe.
Euclid is indeed a “time machine”: from the spatial distribution of the farthest galaxies to the closest ones, the data will tell how the Universe evolved over the last 10 billion years under the dominant effects of dark matter and dark energy. Thus we will be able to study its characteristics and investigate its nature.
Milestone
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ROADMAP
Do you see that ship? On board is Euclid, the ESA satellite that will investigate the dark side of the Universe. It departed on April 17, 2023, from the port of Savona bound for Cape Canaveral, where its launch into space awaits it in July.
Testing simulations for Euclid have begun at ESA's Mission Control Center.
Immediately following launch, the satellite and its scientific instruments will undergo a series of tests for approximately 30 days to ensure everything is functioning correctly.
During this 30-day period, Euclid will reach L2: a point 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, from which it will observe the deep universe for six years.
ESA's Mission Control Center will take charge of Euclid just seconds after launch and will be responsible for its operation and monitoring its health throughout its operational life.
The exciting countdown, a tradition that accompanies the start of space missions, will commence from the main control room.
On June 27, 2023, ESA's Euclid space telescope was encapsulated within a SpaceX Falcon 9 fairing, which will keep Euclid safe and clean during the final days before liftoff and protect the spacecraft from Earth's atmosphere during launch.
Euclid Takes Flight! Excitement Grips the Consortium!
Euclid has finally embarked on its journey! The excitement across the entire Consortium is palpable!
On July 1, 2023, Euclid soared into space atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Within four weeks, the satellite traversed 1.5 million kilometers, reaching its designated location at the Lagrange L2 point.
From its orbital vantage point, Euclid will embark on an ambitious mission to map over a billion galaxies, spanning a cosmic timeline of 10 billion years – encompassing over 75% of the Universe's age.
Relive the launch event here:
Do you see that ship? On board is Euclid, the ESA satellite that will investigate the dark side of the Universe. It departed on April 17, 2023, from the port of Savona bound for Cape Canaveral, where its launch into space awaits it in July.
Testing simulations for Euclid have begun at ESA's Mission Control Center.
Immediately following launch, the satellite and its scientific instruments will undergo a series of tests for approximately 30 days to ensure everything is functioning correctly.
During this 30-day period, Euclid will reach L2: a point 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, from which it will observe the deep universe for six years.
ESA's Mission Control Center will take charge of Euclid just seconds after launch and will be responsible for its operation and monitoring its health throughout its operational life.
The exciting countdown, a tradition that accompanies the start of space missions, will commence from the main control room.
Euclid Takes Flight! Excitement Grips the Consortium!
Euclid has finally embarked on its journey! The excitement across the entire Consortium is palpable!
On July 1, 2023, Euclid soared into space atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Within four weeks, the satellite traversed 1.5 million kilometers, reaching its designated location at the Lagrange L2 point.
From its orbital vantage point, Euclid will embark on an ambitious mission to map over a billion galaxies, spanning a cosmic timeline of 10 billion years – encompassing over 75% of the Universe's age.
Relive the launch event here:
Euclid è una missione dell’ESA che condurrà
una campagna di osservazione volta a mostrare come il meccanismo di accelerazione modifichi la storia
dell’espansione e la distribuzione tridimensionale della materia nell’Universo.
SCIENTIFIC GOALS OF THE MISSION
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Looking into the distance means looking back in time.
The light of distant objects does not reach us instantaneously. It takes a time proportional to their distance which, in astronomy, is measured in light-years: the time the light takes to reach us. The measurements obtained today for the most distant astronomical objects give us a picture of what they must have been like billions of years ago when the light they emitted started its journey to reach us.
With its two instruments VIS and NISP, Euclid is built to measure - with great precision - the position "on the plane of the sky" and "in depth" of galaxies. It will obtain a "3D" map of the Universe, in which the third dimension is indeed time: further away also means more ancient.
Once the "cosmic" age is associated with the observed objects, it will be possible to obtain, as a function of time, how the galaxies group together, the "large-scale distribution" of the galaxies as time varies, effectively providing a series of maps of the structure of the Universe at different eras.
We can call it “cosmic tomography”.
The matter-energy content of the Universe rules the "large-scale structure" of the Universe.
The imprints of dark energy and dark matter will be analyzed using two complementary cosmological effects that will allow acquiring the distinctive signs of the expansion speed of the Universe and of the growth of cosmic structures: the Weak Gravitational Lensing and how the galaxies and other cosmic structures arrange themselves (Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations, BAOs), group together and move around each other (Galaxy clustering and Redshift-Space Distortions).
Just as it happens when observing an object through a lens, in astronomy the matter that is along the line of sight between the observer and the source yields a change in the curvature of space which in turn leads to a change in the path of light, no longer a straight line. This distortion (gravitational lensing) changes both the position of the galaxy in the sky and its shape, which is distorted.
The measurement of these effects will allow us to obtain information on the amount of matter between us and the galaxy, along the "lines of sight", therefore to determine the distribution of dark matter in the Universe.
The mapping of the distribution of galaxies over about a third of the sky will also allow the measurement of the cosmological evolution of the signature of acoustic baryonic oscillations (BAO). The measurement of the characteristics of the BAOs keeps the memory of the characteristics of the primordial Universe whose trace persists in the current network of cosmic structures. These effects can only be detected if one has not only the position in the sky but also the distance of a large number of galaxies.
To deep space
Four weeks after the launch the Euclid spacecraft reached the Lagrangian point L2 orbit.
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