ESA’s Euclid mission launches from Florida towards the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2. This stable equilibrium point of the Sun-Earth system is located 1.5 million kilometres from Earth in the opposite direction of the Sun. L2 orbits along with Earth around the Sun. This artist impression shows Euclid’s first moments in space. The satellite is set to arrive in orbit four weeks after launch. At L2 Euclid joins other space missions such as the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and ESA’s Gaia mission.
ESA’s Euclid mission is designed to explore the composition and evolution of the dark Universe. The space telescope will create a great map of the large-scale structure of the Universe across space and time by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, across more than a third of the sky. Euclid will explore how the Universe has expanded and how structure has formed over cosmic history, revealing more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter.
Acknowledgement: Work performed by ATG under contract for ESA.
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Source: ESA Top Multimedia