Euclid: Ready for launch

The special Euclid space telescope from ESA is almost ready to go into space. It arrived in Florida on April 30th, and now it's being put together with the big SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will take it up there.

The team at ESA's European Space Operations Centre in Germany is getting ready for the most important part of their work. They practiced what to do when getting ready for launch, like if someone on the team gets sick or if something strange happens, like a computer mouse getting stuck.

Euclid is ESA's special telescope made to study the dark Universe. It's going to make a really big and accurate map of the Universe in 3D, like a space map. It will look at how the Universe got bigger and how things are spread out in space and time. This will help us understand more about how gravity works, and about the strange dark energy and dark matter.

Euclid is planned to take off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida on July 1st, 2023, at 11:11 in the morning local time. If it doesn't work that day, they have another plan for July 2nd, 2023. It's an exciting time, and everyone is waiting to see what Euclid will find out about the Universe.