Challenge: The Euclid space telescope is thawed

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A thin layer of ice blurs the Euclid Space Telescope’s view. The European Space Agency (ESA) announced on Tuesday that researchers have now started de-icing the telescope. Swiss institutions are also participating in the Euclid mission.

Icing is a common phenomenon on space probes. But ESA said this was a potential problem for the highly sensitive Euclid mission.

According to the ESA, researchers noticed that the telescope’s vision gradually deteriorated as it was put into operation. Euclid observed the same stars over and over again, but they appeared increasingly dimmer.

Defrosting the telescope, which is around 1.5 kilometers away, is no easy task: Although the telescope has a built-in heater to prevent icing, the telescope contains sensitive optical instruments, as ESA explains. According to the ESA, some of these will not return to exactly the same state after being heated from minus 140 degrees to minus 3 degrees Celsius and then cooled.

Looking into the history of the universe

Therefore, ESA now wants to gradually turn on the heating elements and constantly monitor how the ice layer in the telescope changes. First, the heating elements in the two mirrors need to be turned on. Here ESA rates the risk of damage to other components as low. If the ice problem worsens, additional heating elements must be gradually activated.

The goal of the mission is to create the most comprehensive 3D map of the universe to date. The probe is intended to collect data on billions of galaxies. ESA wants to take a look at the history of the universe and investigate its evolution over the last ten billion years. It is also aimed to obtain information about dark matter and dark energy in space. In addition to the University of Zurich from Switzerland, the University of Applied Sciences of Northwest Switzerland, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and the University of Geneva are also participating in Euclid. The first color images of the telescope were published in November (SDA)

Source : Blick