SPACE: What’s next for Europe’s Euclid ‘dark universe’ telescope after stunning SpaceX launch?

Now that Euclid is in space and sending signals home, its first task is to put itself on the right trajectory for L2. That will happen roughly two days after launch, and its path will be verified along the way to make sure it is heading in the right direction.

The first month of Euclid’s space journey will see it fly to L2, naturally cooling down to space temperatures, while all instruments and systems will be checked out for space. Then months 2 and 3 will see engineers assess the performance of Euclid against what we’d expect on the ground (which will include, perhaps, the release of some calibration images — although mission representatives are tight-lipped about the timing.)

“After this total of three months, then we should be ready to start science observations, but we still have to make some particular calibration even then,” Racca said. Euclid will probably be fully ready in about eight months, assuming nothing goes awry during the testing.

Godspeed.