The Euclid mission design

Understand

Euclid is a space-based optical/near-infrared survey mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) to investigate the nature of dark energy, dark matter and gravity by observing the geometry of the Universe and on the formation of structures over cosmological timescales.

• Euclid will use two probes of the signature of dark matter and energy: Weak gravitational Lensing, which requires the measurement of the shape and photometric redshifts of distant galaxies, and Galaxy Clustering, based on the measurement of the 3-dimensional distribution of galaxies through their spectroscopic redshifts.
• The mission is scheduled for launch in 2020 and is designed for 6 years of nominal survey operations.
• The Euclid Spacecraft is composed of a Service Module and a Payload Module.