Later, a new satellite that will study the universe's evolution over the past 10 billion years is scheduled to launch.
Adam Amara, a professor at Hampshire University, is the creator of the $1 billion Euclid project, which was motivated by his desire to learn more about the dark universe.
Following Prof. Amara's 18 years of preparation, Elon Musk's Space X company is launching it in Florida.
On the European Space Agency (ESA) website or on YouTube, you can watch the launch, which takes place at 16:12 BST.
Only pictures of very small portions of the sky have so far been made available, according to the professor who also serves as the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation's director at the University of Portsmouth.
Instead, Euclid will capture high-resolution pictures that will span more than a third of the Milky Way's extragalactic sky.
On the same sky, it will also conduct near-infrared spectroscopy on hundreds of millions of galaxies and stars.
The project's sponsor, the ESA, claims that the images' quality will be "at least four times sharper than that achieved by ground-based sky surveys.".
Astronomers would be able to learn more about the characteristics of dark matter and dark energy as a result.
The shape and expansion of the universe appear to be governed by these phenomena, but little is actually known about them.
According to experiments, the cosmic contents consist of:.
- approximately 5%. normal substance. - atoms, the building blocks of which we are all composed.
- roughly 27 percent. dark energy. - as of this point unseen and defying description.
- 68 percent or so. dark power. – the enigmatic factor speeding up cosmic expansion.
According to calculations, the universe is 13.8 billion years old.
Over the past 18 years, 2,600 individuals from all over the world have contributed to the project.
Prof. Amara responded, "I don't know," when asked how he would feel when the infamous countdown started on BBC Radio Solent.
Never before have I experienced anything like this. It's fresh. It seems ominous. rejoicing, crying if it explodes, and crying if it goes up. There will be many tears. " .
