On (today) Saturday at 17:11 (Swiss time), the Euclid telescope will be launched into space aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. Over the next six years, the mission is expected to create the largest and most accurate 3D map of the universe to date. Swiss institutions are also involved in the mission.
“We are very curious if everything goes well at the start,” said Martin Melchior of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) when asked by the Keystone-SDA news agency. The launch is a big step for the researcher: he has been involved in the preparation of the Euclid mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) since 2010.
With the new telescope, the scientists want to create a map of the universe, consisting of billions of galaxies that are up to ten billion light years away.
Together with colleagues, Melchior developed the software infrastructure that enables complex data processing via a worldwide network of data centers. “I hope that after the many tests, the data production that will start after the start will be robust,” says Melchior.
The mission involves incredible amounts of data. “Euclid himself will send about a petabyte of data to Earth,” Melchior said. But that’s not all the data that is generated.
The Euclid data will be linked to data from other missions, some intermediates created by scientists will be stored, and further data will also be generated during processing. “We expect a total of 150 petabytes of data,” continues Melchior. This equates to nearly 12 million years of HD quality video. Or triple all the works written by man in all languages.
Scientists hope to use this data to gain insight into dark matter. It is known that dark energy accelerates the expansion of the universe and that dark matter influences the formation of cosmic structures – but what exactly dark energy and matter are is still a mystery. The goal of the mission is to understand how the universe has evolved over the past 10 billion years.
In addition to the FHNW, the University of Zurich (UZH), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and the University of Geneva (Unige) from Switzerland are also involved. In total, about 2,000 engineers and scientists from 200 research institutes in 15 countries are involved in “Euclid”. According to ESA, it is the largest astronomical consortium in history.
Originally, “Euclid” was supposed to start with a Russian Soyuz rocket. However, due to the war in Ukraine, space cooperation between Europe and Russia was cut short in March 2022. Now the telescope will be launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Space X rocket from Cape Canaveral in the US state of Florida. (aeg/sda)
Source: Blick
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