Euclid space telescope data will shed light on evolution of dark universe

The Euclid space telescope successfully launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on July 1 and is now poised to collect data about millions of galaxies across one-third of the sky, part of a quest to better understand the so-called dark universe. This includes dark energy, which appears to accelerate the expansion of the universe, and dark matter, which is not made of atoms and does not interact with light. The telescope will collect data to create a three-dimensional map of the distribution of dark matter in space whose geometry contains key cosmological information. Euclid is a European Space Agency mission with important contributions from NASA, including infrared detectors and data analysis. Ménard's research focuses on novel data analysis techniques to create maps of dark matter and extract astrophysical information from the stream of images that the Euclid mission will produce.