Toss News
This year, the European Space Agency is preparing to launch the unique Euclid satellite, which is specially designed to “observe” and study dark energy and dark matter.
It is expected that “Euclid” will provide important information to reveal the secret of this “dark energy” in the universe, as published by the French “Futura Sciences” website.
Dark energy alone represents 69% of the universe, while dark matter is 26% and the remaining 5% is ordinary matter, i.e. stars, galaxies and gas clouds.
The site said that the year 2023 will not only witness the mission of the “Joyce” probe destined for Jupiter and its worlds, but that the European Space Agency is preparing in July to launch “Euclid”.
In his report, Stephanie Escoffier, director of research specializing in astronomical studies, was quoted as saying, “Euclid is a unique satellite of an unprecedented mission that is supposed to allow us to better understand the dark universe, that is, dark matter and dark energy, which we only know about.” very little about her true nature.”
According to the report, “this dark energy alone represents 69% of the universe, while dark matter is 26% and the remaining 5% is ordinary matter, i.e. stars, galaxies and gas clouds. In other words, we understand only 5% of the universe.”
Euclid will need a month to reach its final position, and scientific observations should begin in October
The site explains the mission and sensitivity of this satellite, noting that “dark energy is responsible for the acceleration of the universe, while dark matter affects the gravity of objects.”
He pointed out that “through his 1.2-meter telescope and optical instruments, an imaging device observing in visible light and a spectrophotometer in near infrared, Euclid will observe the universe from now until 10 billion years ago, when stars and galaxies were in the first stages of formation.” “.
And he confirms that this satellite “will monitor visible objects at unprecedented proportions and scales” and will conduct its observations from its orbit around the “Lagrangian L2” point of the sun and Earth system, 1.5 million kilometers from the earth in front of the sun.
Euclid is scheduled to be launched next July, aboard a SpaceX-Falcon 9 launch vehicle, and this will be the first time that the European Space Agency has entrusted one of its missions (estimated at $ 1.4 billion) to SpaceX.
According to “Futura Synes”, the satellite will need a month to reach its final location, and scientific monitoring operations are supposed to begin in October 2023 after a two-month period of verifying the performance of the devices, and the mission is scheduled to end in the fall of 2029 after six years of monitoring. With the possibility of doing an additional year.
To reveal the nature of this mysterious energy, Euclid will measure the distortion of nearly two billion galaxies due to the presence of dark matter.
The report explains the light emitted from these background galaxies as the result of an interaction of dark matter between them and Earth. This effect is known as gravitational lensing, where dark matter acts as a lens.
The report emphasized that measuring the very weak distortions present in the images obtained by Euclid would make it possible to learn how the mysterious dark matter is distributed in the universe, and how it evolves over time.
