Cape Canaveral (USA) (EFE).- Euclid, the European mission to explore the unknown and dark universe, took off this Saturday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The launch took place at 15:12 GMT and, after separating from the rocket, Euclid will set course for the point known as Lagrange 2, at an average distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth -where telescopes such as Gaia and James Webb-.
From there, for six years, he will observe billions of galaxies at a distance of up to 10,000 million light years, in more than a third of the sky; The goal is to create the largest and most accurate 3D catalog of the universe to try to advance knowledge of the nature of matter and dark energy.
alternative equations
It has never been observed as far as this mission will, so one possibility is that the cosmological Standard Model works, but it could also be that alternative equations fit better.
Euclid, with a cost of 1,400 million euros (about 1,529 million dollars at current exchange rates) and with the participation of Spanish companies and research centers, is therefore designed to offer new data on the unknown and dark side of the universe.
With this three-dimensional map of the universe (time being the third dimension), information on the shapes, positions and distances of galaxies will be collected and will serve to advance knowledge of matter and dark energy, how the expansion of the universe has changed or in understanding gravity.
The normal matter is the one that integrates the planets, the galaxies or the stars and represents 5%; the rest is in the form of dark energy (about 70% of the cosmos) and dark matter (25%), different components that cosmology is still trying to explain.
The dark side of the universe
In the universe, normal matter is what makes up the planets, galaxies or stars and represents 5%; the rest is in the form of dark energy (about 70% of the cosmos) and dark matter (25%).
According to current models, these components – which represent 95% – affect the movement and distribution of visible sources, such as galaxies, although they do not emit or absorb light. Science has not yet been able to determine what they are, so understanding and scrutinizing their nature is one of the most important challenges in cosmology.
As for the expansion of the universe, at first it was believed that this was the product of the “big bang” with which the entire universe originated; It was accepted that at some point it would end up being slowed down by the opposite effect of the force of gravity that binds matter together, but this is not the case.
There is something that somehow creates more and more space between galaxies and this is dark energy. It would produce the accelerated expansion of the universe, but neither its source, nor its physics, nor how it works is known.
Data daily
The ship will use three antennas to communicate with Earth, located in Australia, Argentina and Spain (Cebreros, Ávila), and will send data daily, in a four-hour window. These will be processed in up to nine centers and will finally be archived at the ESA headquarters in Madrid.
To access them, you will not have to wait for the end of the mission, but approximately every year those obtained up to that moment will be made public.
why a SpaceX rocket?
ESA currently does not have launchers and, as a temporary measure, decided to take Euclid and the Hera mission into space with a vehicle from the private American firm.
The situation is due, in addition to the delays of the Ariane 6, to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, after which Europe stopped using the Russian Soyuz rockets, and to the accident of one of its new Vega launchers last December.
A “playlist” and other curiosities
The Euclid consortium includes scientists from more than 300 institutions in Europe, Canada, the United States, and Japan. The ship carries a plate with a drawing of a galaxy made with the fingerprints of the researchers.
Many of the people involved have been with Euclid for more than a decade. On a day like today ten years ago, on July 1, the mission contract was signed. “It had to take off today,” said Walter Cugno of Thales Alenia Space, the mission’s prime contractor.
Euclid has his own “soundtrack”. The ESA has uploaded to the Spotify platform a playlist with songs that in one way or another -although not directly- have to do with the dark universe.
The Spanish group Amaral has once again slipped into it with the song “The universe about me”, as it already did in the list of the Juice to Jupiter mission. There is also Coldplay (“My Universe”), a-ha (“Dark Is The Night for All”) or Bruce Springsteen (“Dancing in the Dark”).