![]() ![]() Nominal mission lifetime is six years, with the possibility of extension (limited by the amount of cold gas used for propulsion).Įuclid emerged from two mission concepts that were proposed in response to the ESA Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 Call for Proposals, issued in March 2007: Dune, the Dark Universe Explorer, and Space, the Spectroscopic All Sky Cosmic Explorer. This special location keeps pace with Earth as we orbit the Sun (and also hosts ESA’s Gaia and Webb space telescopes). Its operational orbit will be halo around a point known as the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 (L2), at an average distance of 1.5 million km beyond Earth’s orbit. The service module contains the satellite systems: electric power generation and distribution, attitude control, data processing electronics, propulsion, telecommand and telemetry, and thermal control.Įuclid will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA. The payload module comprises a 1.2-m-diameter telescope and two scientific instruments: a visible-wavelength camera (the VISible instrument, VIS) and a near-infrared camera/spectrometer (the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer, NISP). ![]() It consists of two major components: the service module and the payload module. The Euclid spacecraft is approximately 4.7 m tall and 3.7 m in diameter. Is our understanding of gravity complete?.How has the expansion of the Universe changed over time?.What is the structure and history of the cosmic web?.This addresses two core themes of ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme: What are the fundamental physical laws of the Universe? and How did the Universe originate and what is it made of?Įuclid is designed to tackle some of the most important questions in cosmology: While dark energy accelerates the expansion of the Universe and dark matter governs the growth of cosmic structures, scientists remain unsure about what dark energy and dark matter actually are.īy observing the Universe evolving over the past 10 billion years, Euclid will reveal how it has expanded and how structure has formed over cosmic history – and from this, astronomers can infer the properties of dark energy, dark matter and gravity, to reveal more about their precise nature. It will make a 3D-map of the Universe (with time as the third dimension) by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, across more than a third of the sky. As the density of matter and energy is linked to the geometry of the universe, the mission was named in his honour.Įuclid is designed to explore the evolution of the dark Universe. Euclid is named after the Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria, who lived around 300 BC and founded the subject of geometry. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |