The telescope took a picture of a glittering field of stars, indicating that it is doing well after a million-mile journey from Earth.
The two instruments aboard Euclid, an ESA (
The mission will delve into some of the biggest mysteries about our universe, including the nature of dark matter and why the universe’s expansion is accelerating. Scientists call the force behind this accelerated expansion “dark energy.”
Euclid launched on July 1 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It has arrived at its destination about 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth, a vantage point known as the Second Lagrange Point (L2).
“We are thrilled to see that the NASA-supplied detectors and other hardware are working as expected and are incredibly excited about the scientific results that will come in the months and years ahead,” said Mike Seiffert, project scientist for the NASA contribution to Euclid at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Given these test images, scientists and engineers behind the mission are confident that the telescope and instruments are functioning well. Mission specialists will continue performance-verification tests over the next few months before science observations commence.
“After more than 11 years of designing and developing Euclid, it’s exhilarating and enormously emotional to see these first images,” says Euclid Project Manager Giuseppe Racca of ESA. “It’s even more incredible when we think that we see just a few galaxies here, produced with minimum system tuning. The fully calibrated Euclid will ultimately observe billions of galaxies to create the biggest-ever 3D map of the sky.”
For more images and details, see: Euclid “Dark Universe” Explorer: First Test Images
More About the Mission
Three NASA-supported science teams are actively contributing to the Euclid mission. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (