The Euclid Space Telescope Set to Revolutionize Our Understanding of the Dark Universe

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid mission is an ambitious initiative aimed at deciphering the mysteries of two perplexing aspects of our universe – dark matter and dark energy. Launched on July 1, 2023, the mission intends to map billions of galaxies up to 10 billion light-years distant, creating the most precise 3D blueprint of the Universe ever.

The Euclid mission, led by the European Space Agency (ESA) and involving a large-scale optical camera developed by researchers at University College London (UCL), aims to delineate the universe’s macrostructures to improve our understanding of the enigmatic elements, dark matter, and dark energy.

The tangible world around us, including stars, galaxies, plants, our bodies, and atoms, make up merely 5% of the universe. The remaining 95% is theorized to be constituted by dark matter and dark energy. Their existence is inferred indirectly; dark matter is thought to bind galaxies, while dark energy accelerates the universe’s expansion. However, their nature remains unknown. The Euclid space telescope has been launched to help solve this riddle.

Professor Tom Kitching from UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, one of the science coordinators for the ESA-led Euclid mission, believes that the data returned by Euclid could help determine whether dark energy is actually “vacuum energy”. This could necessitate redefining our fundamental theories of particle physics, as this vacuum energy would need to be much more potent than currently predicted. If not, it may be Einstein’s theory of gravity that needs revision. “Either outcome would be a physics revolution,” he says.

The Euclid mission is a large-scale collaborative effort. The consortium that proposed it alone includes 2,000 scientists and engineers from 15 countries. The telescope is equipped with two instruments: the Near Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP) and the VIS. Professor Mark Cropper (UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory) spearheaded the design and development of the VIS optical camera for over 16 years.

The camera, one of the largest ever sent to space, will capture high-resolution, panoramic images of a large portion of the universe, spanning back 10 billion years and covering a third of the night sky. The data gathered will enable astronomers to measure the shapes of two billion galaxies and deduce the distribution of visible and dark matter more precisely than before, through weak gravitational lensing.

Observing distant galaxies allows astronomers to look back in time and understand how dark matter has evolved throughout the universe’s history, providing insight into the interaction between dark matter and dark energy. The VIS’s wide field of view will allow it to cover a much larger area of the sky than the Hubble Space Telescope, capturing the same area in one day as Hubble did over 25 years.

The VIS camera is a pan-European project led by UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, with components from France, Switzerland, and Italy. The core electronics were built, tested, and calibrated at MSSL. Christine Brockley-Blatt, the VIS project manager, was responsible for the delivery of 12 sets of electronics and supporting their integration onto the spacecraft, a logistically complex task requiring patience, engineering knowledge, and people skills.

The Euclid mission will provide immense volumes of data that will need to be processed into summary statistics for astronomers to compare with current models of the universe. Professor Benjamin Joachimi (UCL Physics & Astronomy), deputy lead of the team responsible for this task, emphasized the precision required in this process, as even a minor mistake can disrupt the scientific output.

Finally, as well as being part of this data processing task, Professor Joachimi will be involved in examining how the data aligns with mathematical predictions of the universe. His work will include investigating the distribution of dark matter, a subject of much current debate and uncertainty.

Regardless of the outcome, the launch of the Euclid space telescope is set to be a game-changer for our understanding of the universe, potentially sparking a revolution in physics.

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More about Euclid mission

• European Space Agency
• Euclid Mission
• University College London
• Mullard Space Science Laboratory
• Vera C. Rubin Observatory
• Dark Matter and Dark Energy
• SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket