Vera C. Rubin Observatory launches 10‑year LSST sky survey from Chile

The NSF‑DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has begun its ten‑year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), a coordinated effort to photograph the entire southern sky every few nights. Operated by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab and DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the facility uses a 3,200‑megapixel camera that captures a new image roughly every 40 seconds, generating about ten terabytes of data per night and millions of alerts for transient events. Phil Marshall, deputy director of Rubin Operations, said, “It’s taken 20 years of hard science, engineering, and more to get to the point where we can call ‘action’ as we start rolling on this blockbuster movie of the Universe.”

The project, led by Prof. Željko Ivezić, follows extensive system optimization and technical readiness checks. Early data have already identified more than 11,000 new asteroids, including 33 near‑Earth objects, and 380 trans‑Neptunian bodies. International partners such as Croatia’s University of Rijeka contribute computing power through the Bura supercomputer, one of thirteen global data‑processing centers. Over the next decade, LSST will produce billions of celestial measurements, supporting research on dark energy, dark matter, and solar‑system science.