After being secured to the SpaceX Falcon 9 adaptor, on Friday 23 June, Euclid was mounted on top of the Payload Attach Fitting (PAF). Before launch, Euclid on the PAF will be encapsulated in the Falcon 9 rocket. ESA’s new cosmological mission Euclid is getting ready for lift-off with a target launch date of 1 July 2023 from Cape Canaveral in Florida (USA).

ESA's Euclid mission is designed to explore the dark Universe and uncover the great cosmic mystery of dark matter and dark energy. The space telescope will create the largest, most accurate 3D map of the Universe across space and time by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, across more than a third of the sky. It will chart how the Universe has expanded and how large-scale structure is distributed across space and time, revealing more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter.

Find out more about Euclid in ESA's launch kit.