The European space probe Euclid successfully launched on Saturday. The telescope will search for dark matter and dark energy to further explore the universe.
The European space telescope has successfully lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral in the US state of Florida, aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from the space company SpaceX.
The telescope must search for mysterious dark matter and dark energy at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. It is estimated that the universe consists of 68 percent dark energy and 27 percent dark matter. So far we have only been able to observe 5 percent of the universe, or ‘normal’ matter.
The telescope’s journey will take a month. After that, it will take another two months to set up all the instruments. The telescope is expected to remain operational for six to eleven years after that.
The Falcon 9 thruster has now returned to Earth and landed on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean.
Originally, a Russian Soyuz rocket was supposed to take the European telescope to its destination, but that plan was canceled by the war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia. SpaceX, the space company of billionaire and Tesla boss Elon Musk, was chosen as an alternative.
2023-07-01 20:43:00
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