The 322 million euros contract will see TAS take the reins of Esa’s “dark explorer”, Euclid.
Euclid will launch in 2020 and look deep into the cosmos for clues to the nature of dark energy and dark matter. The TAS contract, which will be signed in the coming weeks, completes the sourcing of the two major elements that make up Euclid. A contract to build the payload module, which will hold the 1.2 million telescope and two instruments, has already been awarded to Europe's other big space company, Astrium.
Thales Alenia's job will be to direct the industrial project, constructing the spacecraft's basic structure and then integrating all other parts.
Euclid will make its observations using a visible-light camera from the UK and a near-infrared camera/spectrometer from France. Euclid will launch on a Soyuz rocket and make its observations at a position about 1.5 million km from Earth. Esa expects its total expenditure over the lifetime of the project to be just over 600 million euros.
