Euclid (spacecraft) manufacturer Airbus Defence and Space
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, will provide a visible-light camera (VIS) and a near-infrared camera/spectrometer (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.
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