Europe's Euclid space telescope is scheduled to blast off Saturday on the first-ever mission aiming to shed light on two of the Universe's greatest mysteries: dark energy and dark matter.
from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 11:11 am local time on a Falcon 9 rocket of the US company SpaceX.frameborder="0″ allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen>to launch the mission after Russia pulled its Soyuz rockets in response to sanctions over the war in Ukraine.at a stable hovering spot around 1.5 million kilometres from Earth called the second Lagrangian Point.
Scientists hope to use this information to address what the Euclid project manager Giuseppe Racca calls a"cosmic embarrassment": that 95 percent of the Universe remains unknown to humanity. Euclid, which is 4.7 metres tall and 3.5 metres wide, will use two scientific instruments to map the sky. While this may not reveal the true nature of dark matter, scientists hope it will throw up new clues that will help track it down in the future.
Project scientist Rene Laureijs said that this wider view means Euclid will be able to"surf the sky and find exotic objects" likeBeyond dark energy and matter, Euclid's map of the universe is expected to be a"goldmine for the whole field of astronomy," said Yannick Mellier, head of the Euclid consortium.
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