European Space Agency (ESA) no relation cosmology
Euclid is a visible to near-infrared space telescope developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Euclid Consortium. The objective of the Euclid mission is to better understand dark energy and dark matter by accurately measuring the acceleration of the universe. To achieve this, the Korsch-type telescope will measure the shapes of galaxies at varying distances from Earth and investigate the relationship between distance and redshift. Dark energy is generally accepted as contributing to the increased acceleration of the expanding universe, so understanding this relationship will help to refine how physicists and astrophysicists understand it. Euclid's mission advances and complements ESA's Planck telescope (2009 to 2013). The mission is named after the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid.
Euclid is a medium-class ("M-class") mission and is part of the Cosmic Vision campaign of ESA's Science Programme. This class of missions have an ESA budget cap at around €500 million. Euclid was chosen in October 2011 together with Solar Orbiter, out of several competing missions. Prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the launch was scheduled on a Soyuz ST-B in 2023; following the invasion, Euclid will instead be launched on a Falcon 9 Block 5 on 1 July 2023.Spacecraft
Euclid emerged from two mission concepts that were proposed in response to the ESA Cosmic Vision 2015–2025 Call for Proposals, issued in March 2007: DUNE, the Dark Universe Explorer, and SPACE, the Spectroscopic All-Sky Cosmic Explorer. Both missions proposed complementary techniques to measure the geometry of the Universe, and after an assessment study phase, a combined mission resulted. The new mission concept was called Euclid, honouring the Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria (~300 BC) who is considered as the father of geometry. In October 2011, Euclid was selected by ESA's Science Programme Committee for implementation, and on 25 June 2012 it was formally adopted.ESA selected Thales Alenia Space, Italy for the construction of the satellite. Euclid is 4.5 metres long with a diameter of 3.1 metres and a mass of 2160 kg.The Euclid payload module is managed by Airbus Defence and Space, Toulouse, France. It consists of a Korsch telescope with a primary mirror 1.2 meter in diameter, which covers an area of 0.5 deg2.
An international consortium of scientists, the Euclid consortium, comprising scientists from 13 European countries and the United States, provided the visible-light camera (VIS) and the near-infrared spectrometer and photometer (NISP). Together, they will map the 3D distribution of up to two billion galaxies spread over more than a third of the whole sky. These large-format cameras will be used to characterise the morphometric, photometric and spectroscopic properties of galaxies.Mission execution and data
Euclid will be launched on a Falcon 9 on 1 July 2023. Following a travel time of 30 days, it will orbit the Sun-Earth Lagrangian point L2 in an eclipse-free, about 1 million km wide Halo orbit.
During its nominal mission, which will last at least six years, Euclid will observe about 15,000 deg2, about a third of the sky, focusing on the extragalactic sky (the sky facing away from the Milky Way). The survey will be complemented by additional observations of three deep fields to 5 times the signal-to-noise of the wide survey; the deep fields cover 50 deg2. The three fields will be regularly visited during the whole duration of the mission. They will be used as calibration fields and to monitor the telescope and instrument performance stability as well as to produce scientific data by observing the most distant galaxies and quasars in the universe.To measure a photometric redshift for each galaxy with sufficient accuracy, the Euclid mission depends on additional photometric data obtained in at least four filters at optical wavelengths. These data will be obtained from ground-based telescopes located in both northern and southern hemispheres to cover the full 15,000 deg2 of the mission. In total each galaxy of the Euclid mission will get photometric information in at least 7 different filters covering the whole range 460–2000 nm.
About 10 billion astronomical sources will be observed by Euclid, of which 1 billion will be used for weak lensing (to have their gravitational shear measured) with a precision 50 times more accurate than is possible today using ground-based telescopes. Euclid will measure spectroscopic redshifts for at least 30 million objects to study galaxy clustering.
The scientific exploitation of this enormous data set will be carried out by a European-led consortium of more than 1200 people in over 100 laboratories in 15 countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, UK, Canada, and the US). The Euclid Consortium is also responsible for the construction of the Euclid instrument payload and for the development and implementation of the Euclid ground segment which will process all data collected by the satellite. The laboratories contributing to the Euclid Consortium are funded and supported by their national space agencies, which also have the programmatic responsibilities of their national contribution, and by their national research structures (research agencies, observatories, universities). Overall, the Euclid Consortium contributes to about 30% of the total budget cost of the mission until completion.
The huge volume, diversity (space and ground, visible and near-infrared, morphometry, photometry, and spectroscopy) and the high level of precision of measurements needed demand considerable care and effort in the data processing making this a critical part of the mission. ESA, the national agencies and the Euclid Consortium are spending considerable resources to set up top-level teams of researchers and engineers in algorithm development, software development, testing and validation procedures, data archiving and data distribution infrastructures. In total, nine Science Data Centres spread over countries of the Euclid Consortium will process more than 10 petabytes of raw input images over at least 6 years to deliver data products (images, catalogues spectra) in 3 main public data releases in the Science Archive System of the Euclid mission to the scientific community.
With its wide sky coverage and its catalogues of billions of stars and galaxies, the scientific value of data collected by the mission goes beyond the scope of cosmology. This database will provide the worldwide astronomical community with abundant sources and targets for the James Webb Space Telescope and Atacama Large Millimeter Array, as well as future missions such as the European Extremely Large Telescope, Thirty Meter Telescope, Square Kilometer Array, and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
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