Dark energy, sun to be studied in upcoming ESA space missions

The European Space Agency is gearing up for two of the most ambitious space exploration missions yet, the ESA announced today.

The first mission to be launched, the Solar Orbiter, is currently planned to launch at some point in 2017. The Solar Orbiter will orbit the sun closer than any probe before it. The goal for the mission, the ESA said, is to better understand the sun, its weather, and space weather.

“Solar Orbiter is not so much about taking high-resolution pictures of the Sun, although we’ll get those; it’s about getting close and joining up what happens on the Sun with what happens in space,” explained Tim Horbury from Imperial College London.

The next mission, dubbed Euclid, will launch in 2019. Euclid’s mission is to provide an accurate map of the geometry of the universe to better understand the effects of dark energy on the structure of galaxies, and to better explain the universe’s accelerating expansion.

“Euclid will give us an insight into how structures in the Universe are growing and whether they are growing at the rate we expect from General Relativity (our theory of gravity on large scales),” said Bob Nichol, a Euclid scientist from Portsmouth University.”

The combined cost of the two missions is reportedly just under 1 billion euros. Both missions are designated as “medium-class” missions, meaning that their funding is capped at only 470 million euros each.

Source: ESA (via BBC)