The ESA (European Space Agency) and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than 11:11 a.m. EDT (8:11 a.m. PDT) Saturday, July 1, to launch the Euclid spacecraft. Euclid is an ESA mission with contributions from NASA that will shed light on the nature of dark matter and dark energy, two of the biggest modern mysteries about the universe.
Liftoff will be from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. NASA is contributing to the Euclid mission by delivering critical hardware for one of the spacecraft’s instruments, providing science team funding, and establishing a U.S.-based Euclid data processing center. Experts from NASA who are participating in Euclid will be available for interviews upon request.
Euclid is designed to give important new insights into the "dark side" of the universe -- namely dark matter and dark energy, both thought to be key components of our cosmos. The space telescope will create a great map of the large-scale structure of the Universe across space and time by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, across more than a third of the sky. Euclid will explore how the Universe has expanded and how the structure has formed over cosmic history, revealing more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter.
Click here for the live launch coverage of the Euclid spacecraft launch from NASA.
Click here to learn more about ESA's Euclid Dark Universe Mission.
