A Falcon 9 rocket launched into orbit on Saturday with the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid Telescope to study the dark matter of the universe, US carrier developer SpaceX said.
The launch was carried out from the 40th launch complex at the US Space Forces base at Cape Canaveral in Florida at 11:12 am East Coast time.
The European observatory worth 1 billion euros will conduct a detailed study of galaxies. Scientists expect to receive new data on dark matter and dark energy. The spacecraft will move away from the Earth by about 1.5 million km. It is planned to receive the first data from the observatory in 2024.
According to scientists, the expansion of the universe and the growth of galactic superclusters are due to the influence of dark energy and matter, but this phenomenon has not been fully studied.
As part of a six-year mission, Euclid will take pictures of billions of galaxies located tens of billions of light-years from Earth. The telescope’s observation area will cover more than a third of the night sky, which will help astronomers learn how the universe expanded and cosmic structures grew.
Euclid is equipped with a telescope with a diameter of 1.2 meters, an optical camera (Vis), a spectrometer and a near-infrared photometer (Nisp). These tools will help create 3D images to study the morphometric, photometric and spectroscopic properties of the galaxy.
The first reusable stage of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle after launch will have to make a controlled vertical landing on the A Shortfall of Gravitas offshore drone platform, which is located in the Atlantic 690 km from the cosmodrome.
Source: Rosbalt
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