SpaceX Euclid Telescope Launch

SpaceX plans to launch the Euclid Telescope for the European Space Agency on 2023-07-01 at 15:12 UTC. The launch will be from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The first stage booster, B1080, will be making its second flight, after a turnaround time of 41 days since its last mission.

The Euclid Telescope is an infrared telescope which will be launched directly to the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 (L₂) point, where it will follow a Lissajous orbit, which allows continuous communication with Earth and uninterrupted sunlight for its solar panels. Euclid’s goal is to probe the expansion and acceleration of the universe by measuring the redshifts (and hence distances) of millions of galaxies to high precision and billions to lower precision and simultaneously imaging the shapes of galaxies in visible light. More than a billion galaxies will be used as weak gravitational lenses, measuring their effect on background objects with a precision 50 times that of Earth-based telescopes. Here is a short video from the European Space Agency about Euclid.

Here is a pre-flight preview from Everyday Astronaut.

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