Watch live: Space telescope launches on a mission to study ‘dark universe’

Watch live as an orbital telescope launches on a mission to study the 'dark universe' on Saturday, 1 July.

It is hoped that the Euclid space telescope, built by the European Space Agency (ESA), will shed new light on the mysterious cosmic phenomena of dark energy and dark matter, unseen forces that scientists believe account for 95 per cent of the known universe.

It will launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida, and will go on to make a 3D map of the universe by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years, across more than a third of the sky.

"By observing the Universe evolving over the past 10 billion years, Euclid will reveal how it has expanded and how structure has formed over cosmic history – and from this, astronomers can infer the properties of dark energy, dark matter and gravity, to reveal more about their precise nature," the ESA said.