Space telescope to probe the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter

Two of the biggest mysteries in astronomy are dark matter and dark energy. But soon a project from the European Space Agency (ESA), the Euclid mission, will attempt to unravel some of the puzzles over these forces.

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Tau.Neutrino said:

Space telescope to probe the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter

Two of the biggest mysteries in astronomy are dark matter and dark energy. But soon a project from the European Space Agency (ESA), the Euclid mission, will attempt to unravel some of the puzzles over these forces.

more…

Euclid will be equipped with a 1.2 m diameter Silicon Carbide (SiC) mirror telescope made by Airbus feeding 2 instruments, a high quality panoramic visible imager (VIS), a near infrared 3-filter (Y, J and H) photometer (NISP-P) and a slitless spectrograph (NISP-S).

http://sci.esa.int/euclid/61473-redesign-effort-pays-off-for-euclid-near-infrared-detectors/

Originally, both the sensors and the readout electronics were procured from Teledyne Scientific. The flight hardware – including HgCdTe (mercury cadmium telluride) sensors, readout Sensor Chip Electronics (SCE), and connecting low resistance cable – were delivered to ESA in April 2017. Most of the flight readout electronics began to fail after delivery due to a partial detachment of an Integrated Circuit from the board it was mounted on, caused by the very cold temperatures required for the Euclid mission detectors. The best way forward was to redesign and manufacture a new set of reliable readout electronics in rapid time, rather than attempt to improve the old design.

By 23 July 2019, all of the newly designed flight-model SCE units had been delivered, which fully met all specifications.

Whew, well done, no delay in the launch date.

The next stage for NISP is the integration of the detector hardware with the instrument cryogenic part followed by transfer to Belgium for testing.

By the end of the year, both of the scientific instruments will be delivered to Toulouse, where they will be integrated with the telescope which is currently under assembly. A thermal vacuum test will take place in the second half of 2020, to demonstrate the system’s optical performance.

Meanwhile, the Euclid Structural Thermal Model was readied in May, and testing in a thermal vacuum chamber will begin in mid-July. The full thermal and mechanical test campaign will last until November.

An electrical model of the entire spacecraft, including the instruments, is under test in Torino, Italy, where the service module flight units are also being assembled.

Finally, a full test campaign of the integrated spacecraft is planned for 2021, leading to launch in June 2022.

Euclid is set to observe a huge area of sky over 6 years, making it a space-based equivalent of the highly successful Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). “About 10 billion astronomical sources will be observed by Euclid, of which 1 billion will have their gravitational shear measured with a precision 50 times more accurate than is possible today using ground-based telescopes. Euclid will measure spectroscopic redshifts for 50 million objects.”