ESA procured Falcon 9 launches from SpaceX for its Euclid space telescope, which launched on 2023-07-01.
ESA representatives indicated that discussions with SpaceX regarding the Euclid launch began in May of last year.
ESA originally planned to launch Euclid on a Soyuz rocket but switched to Falcon 9 due to the unavailability of the Soyuz vehicle.
A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying the Euclid spacecraft, a €1.4 billion mission to study dark energy and dark matter.
The contract for the Falcon 9 launch of Euclid was finalized in late January, months after ESA's initial announcement.
The Euclid astronomy mission launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 on 2023-07-01 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The forthcoming NASA Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch by May 2027 and will study a smaller section of sky than Euclid while providing higher-resolution images of millions of galaxies.
The Euclid NASA Science Center at IPAC (ENSCI) at Caltech will archive Euclid science data and support U.S.-based science investigations using Euclid data.
The mass memory of the Euclid spacecraft was developed by Airbus Defence and Space to provide on-board storage for payload and spacecraft telemetry data before transmission to Earth.
The Euclid space telescope launched on 2023-07-01 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA.
More than 500 individual parts of the Euclid thermal insulation developed and produced at Beyond Gravity’s Austrian sites were installed for the mission.
The Falcon 9 first stage booster used for the Euclid launch completed its second launch and landing after previously launching Ax-2.
Beyond Gravity developed and produced the On Board Computer for the Euclid spacecraft at its Gothenburg, Sweden site.
NASA has established a U.S.-based Euclid science data center at the Euclid NASA Science Center at IPAC (ENSCI) at Caltech in Pasadena, California.
Redwire Corporation provided critical hardware that launched onboard the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope mission.
ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt confirmed acquisition of signal from Euclid via the New Norcia ground station in Australia at 17:57 CEST on 1 July 2023.
Euclid lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 17:12 CEST on 1 July 2023.
ESA’s Estrack network of deep space antennas has been upgraded to cope with the data Euclid will acquire.
Euclid will observe billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years to create a three-dimensional map of the Universe with time as the third dimension.
Redwire Space NV designed and manufactured the Euclid space telescope’s baffle under a contract with Airbus.