Euclid – A space mission to map the Dark Universe

Funding source: Academy of Finland, other national funding agencies in Europe

Project duration: 1.1.2016 – 31.12.2020

Project website: www.euclid-ec.org

 

What we are doing:

Euclid Cosmology Mission is the next cosmology satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA). The main object of Euclid is to solve the mystery of dark energy – why is the expansion of the universe accelerating. Dark energy represents around 75 % of the energy content of the Universe today, and together with dark matter it dominates the Universes' matter-energy content. Both are mysterious and of unknown nature but control the past, present and future evolution of Universe.

Euclid is a wide-field space telescope that in the course of six years will photograph over a third of the sky and produce a 3-dimensional map of the universe, the distribution of galaxies and dark matter.

One of the EUCLID Science Data Centers will be located in Finland, led by the University of Helsinki and as a collaboration of several Finnish Universities and CSC.

"Data-intensive computing is a fast growing method in science. Hosting this Science Data Center allows CSC to provide important customized services in data-intensive computing to the Euclid community", says Director Janne Ignatius at CSC.

The launch of the Euclid Satellite is planned for 2021. Euclid will explore how the Universe evolved over the past 10 billion years to address questions related to fundamental physics and cosmology on the nature and properties of dark energy, dark matter and gravity. Euclid will also provide insightful information on the physics of the early universe and on the initial conditions which seed the formation of cosmic structure.