This week, we have delivered to Thales Alenia Space Italy, Euclid’s prime contractor, the final version of the central on-board software controlling the Euclid spacecraft and its subsystems.

Due to be launched from Cape Canaveral (Florida, USA) in July 2023 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, ESA’s Euclid will explore up to 2 billion galaxies over the past 10 billion light years across a third of the sky and at a distance of 1,5 million kilometres from the Earth. The output of the 2-tonne and 4.5-metre-high observatory will be a 3D map of the large-scale structure of the universe.

This European Space telescope with contributions from NASA will study, during at least 6 years, the nature of dark energy and dark matter in order to have a better understanding of the universe’s origin, its evolution and the reason of its accelerating expansion.

Since 2015, SPACEBEL has been in charge of the design, development, coding, integration, test, verification, qualification and delivery of the Euclid control and data management unit application software, which has to command and control the spacecraft and all its subsystems. We also cover the associated software validation facilities and services.

Find out more on this ambitious Space mission named after the Greek father of geometry:

• Il va révéler les secrets de l’énergie noire ! (EUCLID)
• Euclid, le satellite qui doit percer les mystères de l'univers
• Euclid in a Nutshell