Vera C. Rubin Observatory launches ten‑year sky survey from Chile

On 30 June 2026 the Vera C. Rubin Observatory on Cerro Pachón in Chile began its decade‑long Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The facility uses the world’s largest digital camera – a 3.2‑gigapixel (≈3 200‑megapixel) LSST Camera the size of a small car – to repeatedly image the southern sky every few nights.

The survey will capture hundreds of images each night, generating about 10 terabytes of data, over five million images in total, and will catalog more than 37 billion astronomical objects and trillions of measurements. Its scientific goals include mapping dark matter and dark energy, locating millions of new asteroids and comets, and detecting supernovae and other transient phenomena. Funding comes from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, and the observatory is named after astronomer Vera Rubin, whose work provided early evidence for dark matter.

Scientists expect the open data set to be available to researchers worldwide, creating an unprecedented, ultra‑high‑definition time‑lapse record of the universe for the next ten years.