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#20 by eeergo on 19 Nov, 2018 14:35
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#21 by bolun on 18 Jan, 2019 14:06
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KEY MILESTONE FOR EUCLID MISSION, NOW READY FOR FINAL ASSEMBLY
18 December 2018
ESA's Euclid mission has passed its critical design review, marking the successful completion of a major phase in the progress of the project. The review verified that the overall mission architecture and detailed design of all its elements is complete, ensuring that it will be able to perform the unprecedented galaxy survey needed to tackle the mysteries of the dark Universe, and clearing the way to start assembling the whole spacecraft.
http://sci.esa.int/euclid/60994-key-milestone-for-euclid-mission-now-ready-for-final-assembly/
Image credit: ESA/ATG-medialab
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#22 by bolun on 12 Jun, 2019 19:19
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THREE DARK FIELDS FOR EUCLID'S DEEP SURVEY
12 June 2019
Scientists in the Euclid Consortium have selected three extremely dark patches of the sky that will be the subject of the mission's deepest observations, aiming at exploring faint and rare objects in the Universe. The position of the Euclid Deep Fields – one in the northern sky and two in the southern sky – was announced last week, during the annual consortium meeting in Helsinki, Finland.
http://sci.esa.int/euclid/61403-three-dark-fields-for-euclid-deep-survey/
Image credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC; Euclid Consortium
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#23 by eeergo on 19 Sep, 2019 10:57
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#24 by jacqmans on 19 Nov, 2019 14:01
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Airbus-built telescope for ESA’s Euclid mission takes shape
Toulouse, 19 November, 2019 – The Euclid mission is taking shape in Airbus cleanrooms: engineers are now finishing assembly of the telescope, the main instrument of the Payload Module, for which Airbus is responsible within this European Space Agency (ESA) mission led by Thales Alenia Space (TAS) as industrial prime contractor.
The Euclid Payload Module contains the largest telescope with such optical performance ever designed and integrated by Airbus.
After mounting the truss on the base plate, both made of silicon carbide, Airbus is now completing the final phase of integration: the optical alignment. The telescope will then be sent to Thales Alenia Space, where it will go through further testing and be integrated with the platform.
The whole payload integration necessitates extreme clean room discipline with a perfect cleanliness, temperature stability and lack of vibration. For example, during the mechanical assembly, precision of operations is calculated in µm, where for the optical alignment, the scale of precision is in nm (1 million nm in a millimetre).
Giuseppe Racca, project manager of Euclid at ESA said: “Euclid is the second “Medium Class” mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme. With the ultimate goal to understand the origin of the Universe’s accelerating expansion, Euclid will map the geometry of the dark universe with unprecedented accuracy. To achieve that, we need the best team effort from 16 countries, mainly in Europe and America, hundreds of laboratories, etc. A true universal team for unlocking the secrets of the Universe.”
Euclid will collect high resolution images of the sky by pointing the spacecraft to a new field in deep space once every 80 minutes. Within six years of observation, covering more than one third of the entire sky, Euclid will measure the shapes of, and distances to, more than 1 billion galaxies.
“This telescope is the most complex we’ve ever designed and built. It must operate in extremely cold conditions of 100 Kelvin (- 170°C), relying on Airbus’ world-leading expertise in silicon carbide technology for space – already proven in orbit on ESA’s Herschel and Gaia missions,” said Philippe Pham, Head of Earth Observation, Navigation and Science at Airbus.
The Euclid Payload Module has three primary features, the main telescope, a 1.2m diameter mirror and a three-mirror Korsch telescope. The main telescope is made entirely of lightweight silicon carbide (SiC) which gives it excellent thermal stability and enables operation at 130 K (-140°C), making it invisible to near infrared wavelengths.
The 1.2 metre mirror permits diffraction-limited observation of galaxies as faint as magnitude 24.5, while the Korsch telescope supplies light to its two scientific instruments, the Visible Imager (VIS), and the Near-Infrared Spectrophotometer (NISP).
The VIS & NISP instruments are maintained in a very cold environment, at 155 K (-115°C) for the VIS focal plane and 90 K (-180°C) for the NISP one, while the VIS electronics have to be maintained at 290 K (20°C).
The VIS & NISP instruments are developed by the Euclid Consortium and delivered to Airbus and Thales Alenia Space by ESA.
https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2019/11/airbusbuilt-telescope-for-esas-euclid-mission-takes-shape.html
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#25 by bolun on 07 Jan, 2020 19:46
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https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Arianespace_and_ESA_announce_the_Euclid_satellite_s_launch_contract_for_dark_energy_exploration [Jan 7]Quote
Arianespace and ESA today announced the signature of a launch services contract for the Euclid satellite – with the mission’s timeframe for liftoff starting in mid-2022 from the Guiana Space Centre, Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.
The Euclid mission will be compatible with Ariane 62 and Soyuz.https://www.arianespace.com/press-release/arianespace-and-esa-announce-the-euclid-satellites-launch-contract-for-dark-energy-exploration/ [Jan 7]
QuoteThe Euclid mission will utilize either a Soyuz or an Ariane 62 launch vehicle from the Guiana Space Center, Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana (South America), with a launch timeframe starting in mid-2022.
Edit: zubenelgenubi -
#26 by eeergo on 17 Jun, 2020 11:30
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#27 by jacqmans on 09 Jul, 2020 10:48
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The Euclid space telescope is coming together
09/07/2020
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ESA / Science & Exploration / Space Science
ESA’s Euclid mission has reached another milestone on its journey towards launch. Its two instruments are now built and fully tested. These have been delivered to Airbus Defence and Space in Toulouse, France, where they are now being integrated with the telescope to form the mission’s payload module.
Euclid consists of a 1.2-metre mirror telescope that is designed to work at both visible and near-infrared wavelengths – the latter being just longer than the red light humans can see. The telescope will collect light from distant cosmic objects and feed it into two instruments.
The Visible instrument (VIS) and the Near Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP) will run in parallel, recording data simultaneously from whatever portion of the sky the telescope is pointed at.
Euclid’s mission is to measure the shapes of more than a billion galaxies, and the accurate redshifts of tens of millions of galaxies across more than one third of the sky. The redshift is an effect caused by the expansion of the Universe. It stretches the wavelength of light emitted by distant galaxies; the further away the galaxy, the more extreme its redshift. The galaxies in Euclid’s survey will span 10 billion years of cosmic history, and allow scientists to investigate the mysterious dark matter and dark energy that are thought to dominate the Universe.
The VIS instrument will handle the precise measurement of galaxy shapes by taking the very best images of distant galaxies that it possibly can. To do this, the instrument uses a mosaic of 36 CCDs, each of which contains 4000 pixels by 4000 pixels. This gives the detector a total of about 600 megapixels.
“The design, development, manufacturing, testing and calibration of the VIS instrument over a dozen years to a stringent specification has been a challenge,” says Mark Cropper, VIS instrument Lead and Professor at the UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UK.
“We are immensely proud of what the VIS Team has achieved to bring this project to its culmination. That the final performance exceeds our expectations is a tribute to their expertise, dedication and professionalism.”
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/The_Euclid_space_telescope_is_coming_together
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#28 by jacqmans on 09 Jul, 2020 10:49
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Integration of the Euclid telescope
09/07/2020
The supporting structure of the telescope’s secondary mirror for ESA’s Euclid spacecraft being brought together for final integration and optical alignment at Airbus in Toulouse, France.
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#29 by jacqmans on 09 Jul, 2020 10:49
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Inspecting the filter wheel of Euclid’s NISP instrument
09/07/2020
Technicians inspect the filter wheel of ESA’s Euclid mission’s NISP instrument. This component of NISP allows operators to select which wavelengths of infrared light are to be observed by the instrument.
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#30 by jacqmans on 09 Jul, 2020 10:50
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Euclid NISP instrument
09/07/2020
The fully assembled flight model of ESA’s Euclid mission’s NISP instrument in the cleanroom at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM) before being wrapped in Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI).
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#31 by jacqmans on 09 Jul, 2020 10:50
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Euclid’s VIS instrument
09/07/2020
The flight model of ESA’s Euclid mission’s VIS instrument being inspected during vibration testing at Centre Spatial de Liège, Belgium in November 2019.
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#32 by jacqmans on 09 Jul, 2020 10:51
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The VIS and NISP instrument on Euclid’s payload module
09/07/2020
The Structural and Thermal Model of ESA’s Euclid mission’s payload module seen in the clean room, with part of the VIS (covered in black Multi-Layer Insulation, or MLI) and NISP (covered in gold MLI) instruments installed.
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#33 by jacqmans on 09 Jul, 2020 10:52
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Euclid’s service module
09/07/2020
The flight model of ESA’s Euclid mission’s service module being moved in the clean room at Thales Alenia Space in Torino, Italy.
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#34 by jacqmans on 09 Jul, 2020 10:58
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Artist's impression of the Euclid spacecraft.
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#35 by eeergo on 07 Oct, 2020 15:01
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#36 by jacqmans on 21 Dec, 2020 13:43
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The optical and infrared instruments of Euclid, ESA’s mission to study dark energy and dark matter, have passed the qualification and acceptance review and are now fully integrated into the spacecraft’s payload module. This marks an important step forward in the assembly of the Euclid space telescope, which is scheduled for launch in 2022.
The visible and infrared instruments are crucial to measure the shapes and distances of billions of galaxies. This will enable scientists to reconstruct 10 billion years of cosmic history, and investigate the mysterious dark matter and dark energy that are thought to dominate the Universe.
This image shows Euclid’s payload module, which consists of a silicon baseplate supporting the telescope and two instruments. The visual imager is visible towards the top, which, with more than 600 mega pixels, will be one of the biggest cameras in space. The near-infrared spectrometer and photometer is to the right. The telescope's primary and secondary mirrors are hidden from view and inside the white baffle with gold multi-layer insulation, underneath the baseplate in this orientation.
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#37 by gongora on 29 Sep, 2021 14:31
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https://twitter.com/esascience/status/1443126022036234241Quote
Our @ESA_Euclid is ready for the extreme environment of space!
At Centre Spatial de Liège in Belgium, the Euclid space telescope and instruments underwent intensive testing Right pointing backhand index https://esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Euclid_telescope_ready_for_extreme_space_environment
#Euclid #DarkMatter #ExploreFarther
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#38 by eeergo on 05 Oct, 2021 09:22
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The telescope is ready and wrapped to be sent to us in Turin from our Airbus colleagues in Belgium, in order to integrate it with the rest of the spacecraft waiting for it there, as TAS-I is the prime contractor.
https://twitter.com/AirbusSpace/status/1445291526393827331 -
#39 by eeergo on 15 Oct, 2021 15:27
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Payload and Service Modules now together -for the first time- in the same Thales Alenia Space premises in Turin, after delivery from Belgium.
https://twitter.com/ESA_Euclid/status/1448710543318175748