Artistic impression of the Euclid satellite, courtesy of the European Space Agency.

...a planned 8.5 million pounds by the U.K. Space Agency to develop scientific instruments. This is following the formal adoption of the largest collaboration of astronomers in the world by the European Space Agency (ESA) to help build the Euclid satellite. This is the final phase in the selection of Euclid as part of ESA’s “Cosmic Vision” program also strongly funded by the U.K. Space Agency. An army of physicists and engineers have been set in motion to build and fly this new mission by the end of this decade. Euclid will study the enigmatic dark matter and dark energy with great precision, tracing its distribution and evolution throughout the Universe.

The additional investment by the U.K. Space Agency has been awarded to the eight U.K. institutions involved in Euclid that will be part of an international collaboration of nearly a thousand scientists. The Euclid Consortium is the biggest astronomy collaboration ever created and is already bigger than the existing ESA Planck and GAIA missions. The 8.5 million pounds will support the U.K. teams in their lead roles in both of the instruments over the next five years (subject to confirmation following the next Spending Review).

The Euclid Consortium will provide two instruments to ESA. UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory is leading the development of the visible imaging instrument (VIS) and is being supported by more than 5 million pounds from the U.K. Space Agency. The Open University is receiving a grant for its involvement in the near infrared imaging and spectrograph instrument (NISP).