Euclid: A New Spacecraft to Map Out Dark Matter

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Euclid spacecraft is going to be looking at the whole sky, trying to map it out. The central goal for Euclid is to figure out more about dark energy and dark matter. It's not dark in the sense that you might imagine they're creating shadows or sort of blocking out our view of the cosmos. They are invisible or transparent, and seem to be sculpting the universe in different ways.

Ian Sample speaks to the cosmologist Dr Andrew Pontzen about the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission, which hopes to uncover more about two of the universe’s most baffling components: dark energy and dark matter. Pontzen explains what the probe will be looking for and how its findings will contribute to our understanding of the structure and evolution of the cosmos. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod