On February 22, Thales Alenia Space, joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33 %) and industrial prime contractor for Euclid, together with European Space Agency (ESA) welcomed for the first time eminent scientists from the Euclid Consortium with the satellite in its final integration phase. The iconic Euclid satellite will study one of the Universe’s best kept secrets, namely dark matter and dark energy.
Back in June 2012, ESA selected the Euclid Consortium to take charge of the scientific instruments, data production and operation of the scientific aspects of the mission. It is funded by national space agencies and research organizations and coordinated by the Euclid Consortium Lead (ECL) and a Euclid Consortium Board (ECB)
The Euclid Consortium comprises the teams that first designed and proposed the Euclid mission as a candidate for the ESA Cosmic Vision program, as well as new organizations that are now contributing to implementation. Fourteen European countries are currently involved in the consortium’s activities (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland and United Kingdom). Other members include Canada and the United States (through NASA and several American laboratories), as well as several Japanese laboratories.
During its six-year mission, Euclid will map the large-scale structure of the Universe out to a distance of more than 10 billion light-years to show how it has expanded and how its structure has evolved over the last three-quarters of its history. The mission is designed to answer some of the most fundamental questions in modern cosmology, such as how the Universe formed and why it is expanding at an accelerating rate instead of being slowed by gravitational attraction.
Standing 4.7 meters tall and weighing about 2 metric tons at launch, Euclid will orbit the L2 Lagrange point in the Sun-Earth system, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth opposite to the Sun. It will deliver 150,000 high-definition images and associated chromatic and spectral information, amounting to nearly one petabyte of data per year. Euclid is scheduled to be launched in July 2023 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The Romanian contribution to the Euclid mission is supported by the Institute of Space Science, in the frame of the Multi-Lateral Agreement (MLA) between ESA and the Euclid Consortium.
More information and some beautiful photos might be found at:
