Euclid, a European ‘dark universe’ mission, is prepared for a July 1 SpaceX launch

The dark universe hunter from Europe is prepared to depart its home planet. Euclid, a dark matter and dark energy mission, is set to launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station here tomorrow (July 1) on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The launch is expected to take place on July 1 at 11:11 a.m. EDT (15:11 GMT). Space.com will provide a free live webcast from NASA Television beginning at 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT).

Euclid will travel approximately one month after liftoff to the faraway Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, which is approximately one million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from Earth and is on the opposite side of the sun from us. The probe will spend six years studying the dark universe, gathering information on the evolution of galaxies, the expansion of the universe, and other physical phenomena after another seven months of commissioning.

“This is 15 years of people’s lives,” Carole Mundell, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) director of science, said during a prelaunch briefing on June 23. “There were two teams that originally proposed missions, one to study dark energy and one to study dark matter. Both were incredibly challenging, but we thought, ‘Well, that’s not hard enough. Let’s put them both together on a single spacecraft and do the impossible.’ “

We can only see dark matter through its gravitational effects, but it is believed to make up the majority of the material universe. The force that is thought to be accelerating the universe’s expansion is called dark energy. Euclid means to carry more keen eyes to the sky than at any other time to attempt to demystify dark matter and dark energy.

As Mundell noticed, the 1.4 billion-euro ($1.5 billion USD) Euclid was initially parted among two mission concepts proposed to ESA in 2007: Space (Spectroscopic All Sky Cosmic Explorer) and Dune (Dark Universe Explorer). Euclid, which was selected in 2011, builds on these proposals to investigate dark energy and dark matter across time and space.

Euclid will include two complementary experiments. The first examines lensing — the “precise detail, the shapes of galaxies … that goes back to 10 billion light-years,” said Gaitee Hussain, head of ESA’s science division, during a similar briefing. The second study will investigate the redshifting of worlds, or the radiance of retreating universes being extended into the red parts of the wavelength spectrum.

Hussain added the images that Euclid takes will be four times sharper than comparable ground surveys that look at large swaths of the sky. “That also requires really working hard on the technology to get the most out of the instrumentation we possibly can,” Hussain said.

Euclid will use two instruments to complete this task. The first will concentrate on visible light, while the second is made to work best with infrared (heat) wavelengths.

Euclid is likewise complementary to different missions with ESA contribution that look at cosmic time, for example, Europe’s Gaia, which tracks the location of in excess of a billion objects in space, and the NASA-led James Webb Space Telescope, which is looking at some of the universe’s first-ever stars and galaxies, among other tasks.

It appears that the forecast for Saturday’s launch is excellent. For the early morning before 8 a.m. local (the longest-range information that anyone could hope to find in the 24-hour forecast), Cape Canaveral Space Force Station will have clear skies and no chance of rain or lightning, with light winds of only five knots, as per the figure from the U.S. Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45.