Vera Rubin Observatory launches decade-long sky survey

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile began the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) on Tuesday, initiating a ten-year program that will capture detailed images of the southern sky every 40 seconds at night. The survey will employ the world’s largest digital camera, weighing about 6,600 pounds, to create a continuous time-lapse of celestial phenomena ranging from asteroids to supernovae.

Funded jointly by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, the $800 million facility sits at an altitude of 8,800 feet on Cerro Pachón, a site chosen for its dark, dry conditions. The project aims to compile a comprehensive inventory of objects in the solar system and the Milky Way and to investigate dark matter by measuring the distorted light from distant galaxies.

"Today, we begin filming the greatest cosmic movie ever made," said Brian Stone, acting director of the National Science Foundation.

"The decision to officially begin the LSST was made after a period of system optimization and a careful operational review of technical readiness, data system performance and scientific validation," said Željko Ivezić, head of LSST.

The camera will capture thousands of images each night, completing a full scan of the southern sky every few days and revisiting the same regions hundreds of times over the survey’s duration. Researchers plan to use artificial intelligence to process the data, generating up to seven million alerts nightly for transient events. The final dataset is expected to contain billions of objects with trillions of measurements, made publicly available through regular releases.

Since initial testing, the observatory has already identified about 11,000 new asteroids and dozens of other solar-system objects, demonstrating the system’s capability ahead of the full survey.