A new 10-year sky survey is now underway, with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory starting what officials call the Legacy Survey of Space and Time.

June 30, 2026 marks the start of the project, which will use Rubin’s 3200-megapixel camera, described as the largest digital camera ever created, to repeatedly scan the entire sky over the southern hemisphere every few nights.

Over the next decade, each point in the sky will be covered 800 times, creating what the source describes as an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse record of the cosmos.

“Today, we begin filming the greatest cosmic movie ever made,” U.S. National Science Foundation director Brian Stone said in a statement. “Every night, NSF–Department of Energy (DOE) Rubin Observatory will expand the frontiers of knowledge and strengthen America’s global leadership in science and innovation.”

The survey is expected to focus on dark energy and dark matter, described in the source as the force driving the accelerating expansion of the universe and something that seems to be holding galaxies together.

“With the launch of the ten-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time, NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory is opening a new window on the universe. It is embarking on a mission that will redefine modern cosmology and astrophysics,” Darío Gil, Under Secretary for Science at the DOE, said in the statement.

“With its world-class design and tools, Rubin Observatory will capture the dynamic nature of our cosmos and reveal unimagined insights into our universe’s biggest mysteries, from our own solar system to the very structure of the universe.

“By seeking to understand the enigmatic phenomena of dark energy and dark matter, we are not just observing the stars; we are striving to grasp the fundamental laws that govern our existence.”

The source says the survey will track pulsating stars, supernova explosions and fossil records of galaxies. It also says Rubin is expected to discover millions of new asteroids and comets.

In its first few months of operations, Rubin, which sits atop a mountain in northern Chile, has already discovered 11,000 previously unseen asteroids, including 33 near-Earth objects and 380 trans-Neptunian objects, described in the source as icy minor planets and dwarf planets beyond the orbit of Neptune.

The final LSST dataset is estimated to contain billions of objects, with results to be made available to scientists and the general public.

“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,” Phil Marshall, deputy director of Rubin operations for SLAC, said.

“Millions of alerts in just the last couple of months show that Rubin is up and running as a discovery machine. Now we’re putting it all together.”

Read more from Space.