[Satellite TODAY 06-11-13] Astrium has been awarded the payload module contract for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) future astronomy mission Euclid, due for launch in 2020. Astrium will deliver a fully integrated module incorporating a 1.2-meter diameter silicon carbide (SiC) telescope and housing the mission’s science instruments.

 

     Euclid is the second medium class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision program. With the goal of understanding the origin of the universe’s accelerating expansion, the mission will map the geometry of the dark universe with high accuracy.

 

     Euclid will collect deep and high-resolution images of the sky by rotating the spacecraft once every 80 minutes. Within six years of observation, covering more than one third of the entire sky, the mission is expected to measure the shapes of, and distances to, more than 2 billion galaxies.