European space telescope with Swiss stake takes off

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The space telescope Euclid was launched successfully into space on Saturday on a long-awaited mission involving several Swiss institutions. 

The satellite lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:12 am local time (5:12 pm Swiss time) aboard a Falcon 9 rocket belonging to the American company SpaceX. The two-tonne telescope will position itself at an observation point some 1.5 million kilometres from Earth.

Over a period of six years, Euclid will trace a three-dimensional map of the Universe, making it possible to observe galaxies as far away as 10 billion light-years.

The Swiss contribution to the Euclid mission amounts to around CHF 24 million ($26.7 million).

+ In space exploration, Switzerland punches above its weight

“I hope that everything will hold together even after the launch and that we won’t be forced to scramble,” Martin Melchior, a researcher at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) told the press agency Keystone-ATS. 

Melchior and his colleagues developed the software infrastructure that enables the data to be managed and distributed over a global network. In addition to the FHNW, the other Swiss institutions involved in the project are the government’s Space Affairs Division, the University of Geneva (UNIGE), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and the University of Zurich (UZH).

UNIGE has developed algorithms for measuring the distance between galaxies, while the EPFL will be looking at the gravitational lensing effect produced by some of them, and even by clusters of galaxies. UZH has created simulations that reproduce the distribution of galaxies.

The quantities of data required for the mission are enormous. The supertelescope will send around one petabyte of data to Earth. This corresponds to 1024 terabytes but the quantities processed will be infinitely greater.

Euclid will be linked to data from other missions, so those in charge, including Swiss partners, are predicting a deluge of data of the order of 150 petabytes. That’s the equivalent of 12 million years of HD video or three times the number of books written in every language in the history of mankind.