European telescope launched on a quest for clues to universe’s darkest secrets
- SpaceX launched the European Space Agency’s Euclid observatory on Saturday from Florida towards its destination 1.5 million km (930,000 miles) away
- The telescope’s 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
A European space telescope blasted off on Saturday on a quest to explore the mysterious and invisible realm known as the dark universe.
Named for antiquity’s 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.
Scientists understand only 5 per cent of the universe: stars, planets, us. The rest is “still a mystery and an enigma, a huge frontier in modern physics that we hope this mission will actually help to push forward,” the European Space Agency’s science director, Carole Mundell, said just before lift-off.
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.