ESA announced its intent in October to launch Euclid and the Hera mission on Falcon 9 and signed a final contract with SpaceX at the end of January.
ESA chose to launch Euclid on a Falcon 9 under a contract with SpaceX after losing access to the Soyuz rocket following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Euclid will spend about one month traveling to the Earth–Sun L2 point located roughly 1.5 million kilometers from Earth in the direction opposite the Sun.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, planned for launch in 2027, will perform dark energy studies similar to Euclid and is expected to be complementary to Euclid’s observations.
ESA began first discussions with SpaceX in May 2022 to explore launching Euclid on Falcon 9 and subsequently conducted feasibility studies and compatibility testing.
The Falcon 9 deployed the European Space Agency’s Euclid spacecraft 41 minutes after liftoff onto a trajectory toward the Earth–Sun L2 Lagrange point.
ESA originally planned to launch Euclid on a Soyuz rocket from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana.
Euclid’s launch was delayed due to the war in Ukraine and is now scheduled for 1 July on a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA.
Euclid features a 1.2-meter telescope equipped with a visible-wavelength camera and a near-infrared spectrometer and photometer.
In October 2022, ESA selected SpaceX to launch Euclid on a Falcon 9, and the launch contract was finalized in December 2022.
The two-ton Euclid spacecraft will operate at the Earth–Sun L2 point approximately 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
A Teledyne e2v team of engineers, technicians, and scientists designed and manufactured 36 sensors for Euclid’s visible-wavelength camera, which is part of the payload module.
Euclid is built and operated by the European Space Agency with contributions from NASA.
Liftoff of Euclid is scheduled for 11:11 a.m. Eastern on 2023-07-01 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
ESA began studies in the summer of 2022 to assess Euclid’s compatibility with Falcon 9 after the spacecraft had been designed for Soyuz.
The mass memory on the Euclid spacecraft was developed by Airbus Defense and Space and provides on-board storage for payload and spacecraft telemetry data before transmission to Earth.
More than 500 individual parts of Euclid’s thermal insulation were developed and produced at Beyond Gravity’s Austrian sites and installed for the mission.
Teledyne Imaging Sensors produced the SIDECAR ASIC that operates Euclid’s H2RG arrays and digitizes the image data.
Euclid will explore the evolution of the dark Universe by constructing a three-dimensional map of the Universe from observations of billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years.
Euclid has a 1.2-meter-diameter telescope designed to operate at both visible and near-infrared wavelengths.