Falcon 9 launches ESA’s Euclid space telescope

A European mission to unravel some of the biggest mysteries in the universe is underway thanks to a launch from an American rocket. A SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off at 11:12 a.m. Eastern July 1 from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40. The rocket deployed its payload, the European Space Agency’s Euclid spacecraft, 41 minutes later after placing it on a trajectory to the Earth-sun L-2 Lagrange point. The rocket’s booster, on its second flight after launching the Ax-2 private astronaut mission in May, landed on a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean. “It was really a fantastic launch,” said ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher at a post-launch briefing. “This is a very important mission for the European Space Agency.” The two-ton Euclid spacecraft, built by Thales Alenia Space, will spend a month traveling to the L-2 point, 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth in the direction opposite the sun. Once there, it will undergo a two-month commissioning period before beginning its science mission. Carole Mundell, ESA’s director of science, said that commissioning work includes turning on the two main instruments on the spacecraft and calibrating the data, while also confirming the thermal stability of the system. “The optics are so precise we should have diffraction-limited images, so we want to make sure we are getting that quality of images and that our spectra are as we expect.” The 1.4-billion-euro ($1.5 billion) mission will spend six years conducting a detailed survey of one third of the sky using a visible camera and near-infrared spectrometer and photometer. Astronomers will use those observations of millions of galaxies to test the validity of various models for dark matter and dark energy, which together comprise 95% of the universe.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 lifts off July 1 carrying ESA’s Euclid cosmology spacecraft. Credit: SpaceNews/Jeff Foust

Scientists involved with the mission are optimistic that Euclid’s observations will help them understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy. “It’s a really great time to be a cosmologist,” said Henk Hoekstra, a member of the 2,000-person Euclid Consortium of scientists and engineers who have worked on the mission, during a pre-launch briefing June 30. “The launch of Euclid really changes cosmology into the future.”

Euclid will collect a massive amount of data: an estimated 170 petabytes (one petabyte is 1,000 terabytes) over its planned six-year mission. That will be augmented by complementary surveys by several ground-based telescopes. Nine data centers, eight in Europe and one in the United States, will archive the data.

Although Euclid was developed for cosmology, project scientists say the data should be useful for a wide range of other studies, from objects in our solar system to the evolution of galaxies. “This dataset will be transformational across a huge range of astrophysics projects,” said Jason Rhodes, chair of the Euclid Consortium Board. “This is data that is going to be mined by astrophysicists for decades to come.”

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, under development for launch in 2027, will perform dark energy studies similar to Euclid. “It will be doing similar science but in a different way,” said Nicola Fox, NASA associate administrator for science, after the launch. She said the two missions should be complementary in much the same was as NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and ESA’s Solar Orbiter missions to study the sun. “The partnership with Euclid and Roman is going to unlock so much of our dark universe.”

While NASA is a partner with ESA on Euclid, providing infrared detectors for one of its instruments, the launch took place from Florida because of a contract ESA signed with SpaceX. ESA turned to the Falcon 9 after losing access to the Soyuz rocket, originally selected to launch the mission, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

“We owe them a huge thanks. Without them our satellite would be sitting on the ground for two years,” Mike Healy, head of science projects at ESA, said of SpaceX before the launch.

The first discussions with SpaceX were in May of 2022, he said, followed by feasibility studies and testing to ensure Euclid was compatible with the Falcon 9. While ESA announced in October its intent to launch Euclid and another mission, Hera, on the Falcon 9, the agency did not sign a final contract with SpaceX until the end of January.

“We had to squash what we normally do in three years into five months,” he said of the switch to the Falcon 9. That required dealing with a number of challenges ranging from technical issues of integrating the spacecraft with the rocket to dealing with U.S. export control policies.

“I’m very happy with the relationship we have with SpaceX,” said Giuseppe Racca, Euclid project manager at ESA, before the launch. “They are incredibly skilled in problem solving. It’s a most valuable experience.”

SpaceX begins 2023 with Transporter-6 launch

After a record-setting year of launch activity in 2022, SpaceX kicked off the new year Jan. 3 with a Falcon 9 launch of more than 110 smallsats. The Falcon 9 lifted off on the Transporter-6 dedicated smallsat rideshare mission at 9:56 a.m. Eastern from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40. The rocket’s first stage, making its 15th flight, landed back at the Cape’s Landing Zone 1 eight and a half minutes after liftoff. The rocket’s upper stage started releasing its 114 payloads into sun-synchronous orbit nearly an hour after liftoff, a process involving 82 individual deployments that took more than a half-hour to complete. SpaceX was able to confirm 77 of the deployments in real time. The largest single customer on the launch, in terms of number of satellites, was Planet, which had 36 of its SuperDove imaging satellites on board. Planet has now launched more than 500 satellites, mostly cubesats like the SuperDoves. 

A SpaceX Falcon 9 lifts off Jan. 3 on the Transporter-6 dedicated smallsat rideshare mission. Credit: SpaceX webcast

Some of the other major payloads on Transporter-6 included:

- Six LEMUR cubesats for Spire, which operates a constellation for collecting weather and tracking data;
- Four imaging satellites for Satellogic, which has slowed the deployment of its constellation after revenues fell short of projections in 2022; 

- Four radio-frequency intelligence satellites for Luxembourg-based Kleos and the BRO-8 radio-frequency intelligence satellite for French startup Unseenlabs;
- Three synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging satellites for Iceye and two SAR satellites for Umbra;
- Two satellites for Lynk, which is developing a constellation to provide direct-to-handset connectivity services; Twelve SpaceBee internet-of-things satellites for SpaceX-owned Swarm Technologies;
- Gama Alpha, the first satellite by French company Gama to test solar sail technologies;
- The Electro-Optical/Infrared Weather Systems (EWS) technology demonstration cubesat for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command.

Several of the payloads on Transporter-6 are orbital transfer vehicles that will later deploy satellites. They include two ION vehicles from D-Orbit, the second Vigoride tug from Momentus and Launcher’s first Orbiter vehicle.

Transporter-6 is the sixth in a series of smallsat rideshare missions by SpaceX, which performed the first two Transporter missions in 2021 and three in 2022. The company said in August that it continues to see strong demand for the services despite the rise in small launch vehicles that offer dedicated launch options for smallsats. All of SpaceX’s Transporter missions for 2023 are full, the company said then, although last-minute opportunities may arise.

A record 2022

Transporter-6 was the first orbital launch globally in 2023. It comes after a record 2022, when there were 186 orbital launch attempts, 40 more than 2021. A total of 179 launches were successful, compared to 136 in 2021.

Orbital launch activity has doubled in just the last five years. In 2017 there were 86 successful orbital launches in 90 attempts. SpaceX is responsible for much of that growth, having gone from 18 launches in 2017 to 61 in 2022, while Chinese launches increased from 18 in 2017 to 64 in 2022.

With the exception of New Zealand, which went from the first Rocket Lab Electron launch in 2017 to nine in 2022, other countries saw flat or reduced launch activity over the last five years. That includes Europe, which went from 11 launches in 2017 to 6 in 2022, and Japan, which had seven launches in 2017 but only a single, unsuccessful Epsilon launch in 2022.

SpaceX, whose 61 launches in 2022 were nearly double the 31 launches it conducted in 2021, will attempt to set another launch record in 2023. SpaceX founder Elon Musk has suggested the company will attempt as many as 100 launches in 2023, a total that likely include its Starship vehicle, whose first orbital launch is expected some time this year.