Shortly after launching on 1 July, the European space observatory Euclid started performing tiny, unexpected pirouettes. The problem revealed itself during initial tests of the telescope’s automated pointing system. If left unfixed, it could have severely affected Euclid’s science mission and led to gaps in its map of the Universe.
Mapping the Universe Euclid is designed to carry out a deep survey of the Universe by mapping the positions of 1.5 billion galaxies in 3D, looking beyond the stars in the Milky Way. But to do so, it will often have to photograph some of the darkest patches of the sky, which have only very faint stars.
This didn’t always work out as planned, says Racca. “Sometimes it had too few stars, and it was getting confused. It was losing the guiding stars and then automatically started to look for them again.”
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