Euclid, the European mission to explore the unknown and dark universe, took off Saturday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The launch took place at 15:12 GMT, and after separating from the rocket, Euclid will set a course for the point known as Lagrange 2, 1.5 million km from Earth – where telescopes such as Gaia and James Webb are -.
From there, for six years, he will observe billions of galaxies at a distance of up to 10,000 million light-years, in more than a third of the sky; The goal is to create the largest and most accurate 3D catalog of the universe to try to advance knowledge of the nature of matter and dark energy.
It has never been observed as far as it will do this task, so one possibility is that the cosmological standard model works, but alternative equations could also be a better fit.
Euclid was designed, at a cost of 1,400 million euros (about $1,529 million at current exchange rates) and with the participation of Spanish companies and research centers, to provide new data on the unknown and dark side of the universe.
With this 3D map of the universe (time is the third dimension), information will be collected on the shapes, locations and distances of galaxies and will advance knowledge of dark matter and energy, how it has changed the expansion of the universe or in understanding gravity.
Ordinary matter is that which incorporates planets, galaxies or stars and accounts for 5%; The rest is in the form of dark energy (about 70% of the universe) and dark matter (25%), various components that cosmology is still trying to explain.
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