NASA Joins Dark Universe Project of ESA Hunting For Dark Matter And Energy

A European space telescope designed to investigate the mysterious natures of dark matter and dark energy will launch in 2020 - and the North American Space Agency agreed to contribute to the project known as Euclid by supplying 20 of the required detectors for the near-infrared instrument. NASA also appointed 40 US scientist which will join around 1000 European scientists already working on the project as members of the Euclid Consortium, tasked with building the instruments and then analyse the science data returned from the mission.

"NASA is very proud to contribute to ESA's mission to understand perhaps the greatest science mystery of our time," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

Science still cannot explain why our whole universe is still expanding, and even accelerates the speed of expansion! This finding of acceleration alone, without explanation, yielded the second most recent Nobel Prize for Physics in 2011, which was given to the teams of US, European and other international scientists that made the discovery in 1998.

The term 'dark energy' is often used to signify the mysterious force driving the acceleration. By using Euclid to study its effects on galaxies and galaxy clusters across the Universe, astronomers hope to come much closer to understanding its true nature and influence.

Euclid's 1.2 m-diameter telescope and two scientific instruments will map the shape, brightness and 3D distribution of two billion galaxies covering more than a third of the whole sky and looking back over three-quarters of the history of the Universe.

Scientists hope to solve the two key problems in our understanding of the evolution and fate of our expanding cosmos: the roles played by 'dark matter' and 'dark energy'. Dark matter is invisible, but has gravity and acts to slow the expansion. Dark energy, however, seems to be accelerating the expansion seen around us today.

Together, these two components are thought to comprise more than 95% of the mass and energy of the Universe, with 'normal' matter and energy making up the remaining small fraction. But what they are remains a profound mystery.