A European space telescope blasted off Saturday on a quest to explore the mysterious and invisible realm known as the dark universe.
SpaceX launched the European Space Agency’s Euclid observatory towards its ultimate destination 1.5 million km away, the Webb Space Telescope’s neighbourhood.
It will take a month to get there and another two months before it starts its ambitious six-year survey this autumn.
Named after the ancient Greek mathematician, Euclid will scour billions of galaxies covering more than one-third of the sky.
By pinpointing the location and shape of galaxies up to 10 billion light-years away — almost all the way back to the cosmos-creating Big Bang — scientists hope to glean insight into the dark energy and dark matter that make up most of the universe and keep it expanding.
The telescope’s highly anticipated 3D map of the cosmos will span both space and time in a bid to explain how the dark universe evolved and why its expansion is speeding up.
The lead scientist for the $1.5 billion mission (€1.4 billion) said Euclid will measure dark energy and dark matter with unprecedented precision.
Four metres tall and almost as wide, Euclid sports a 1.2-metre telescope and two scientific instruments capable of observing the cosmos in both visible light and near-infrared.
AP/PTI
