EUCLID - A Marvel of Engineering

Around 95 per cent of the Universe appears to be made of dark matter and dark energy, yet we still do not know what either of them is.   ESA’s Euclid mission, launched in 2023, is mapping billions of galaxies across more than a third of the sky to help find out.

By measuring how light from distant galaxies is bent by the matter it passes, and how galaxies have clustered over the last ten billion years, Euclid will trace where dark matter sits and how dark energy has driven the expansion of the Universe. It arrives at an interesting moment, with recent results hinting that dark energy may not be constant after all.

In this talk, Professor Adam Amara, who worked closely with Euclid’s engineering teams during its design, explains what the mission is looking for, what it takes to measure something so subtle from space, and what its first data are beginning to show. He closes by looking ahead to NASA’s planned Habitable Worlds Observatory, which will need even greater precision and stability to search for signs of life on Earth-like planets around other stars.