A new NASA space observatory is scheduled to launch into orbit this week on a lofty mission to map more than 450 million galaxies.
The SPHEREx mission (short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) will map the entire sky four times over two years, offering scientists a chance to study how galaxies form and evolve, and providing a window into how the universe came to be.
“It’s going to answer a fundamental question: How did we get here?” Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director of the astrophysics division at NASA headquarters, said in a recent news briefing.
The launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California was paused for the night less than an hour before a scheduled 8:10 p.m. PT takeoff window on Monday.
The launch window was pushed to 8:10 p.m. PT on Tuesday, NASA said.
“Due to unfavorable weather at the launch site and an issue with one of the @NASA spacecraft, we are standing down from tonight’s Falcon 9 launch of NASA’s SPHEREx and PUNCH missions,” it said on X.
Liftoff was initially planned for Feb. 27, but NASA rescheduled it several times, first to “complete vehicle processing and prelaunch checkouts,” and because of availability at the California launch site.
“The additional time will allow teams to continue rocket checkouts ahead of liftoff,” NASA said after a scheduled launch on Saturday was the subject of a stand-down order and rescheduling.
The cone-shaped spacecraft — along with four suitcase-sized satellites that NASA will deploy at the same time on a separate mission to study the sun — will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The $488 million SPHEREx mission, which has been in development for about a decade, is designed to map the celestial sky in
12 Comments
FirmwareBurner
> four suitcase-sized satellites
Americans will use anything else but the metric system :)
spwa4
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shmageggy
This is so cool, but I did not see a key piece of info in the article: does the ongoing operation of this mission fall under NASA's science budget and therefore at risk of cuts and defunding under Trump [1]?
[1] https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/white-house-may-seek-t…
dylan604
"The SPHEREx mission <snip> will map the entire sky four times over two years, offering scientists a chance to study how galaxies form and evolve, and providing a window into how the universe came to be."
So each object will be scanned ~6 months from the previous scan. How much evolving within the universe will be noticeable within that 2 year run? My gut response is not much, but that's why we do the science to see the changes.
"designed to map the celestial sky in 102 infrared colors "
So I'm guessing the coolant used to make IR scanning possible will be the limiting factor on operational time span. This article didn't say where this satellite will be parked either, but wikipedia[0] shows it to be a geosync orbit. Would have been interesting to be able to design a replaceable coolant module to extend the observations to really make seeing the evolution possible. Obviously complexity adds to cost and design time, so of course they didn't. Just dreaming
As an example, the study of the stars orbiting around SagA* are very revealing, but have required > 10 years of observations.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPHEREx
ChuckMcM
It always surprises me how my enthusiasm for scientific discovery is affected by fears of a dystopian future. My understanding is that with red shift calibration here we'll get a much better idea of the 'when' in terms of various galactic structures emerged, that might give us an interesting idea of where we are in the life-cycle of the Milky Way. But the observation of water signatures will be the most interesting to me. Presumably there is a lot of water tied up in comets and such, but will SPHERE be able to detect those signatures near planets?
xyst
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layer8
The Wikipedia article has more useful information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPHEREx
dj_gitmo
Do these missions ever build back-up hardware? What if the probe is lost because of a lunch mishap, or there is a malfunction during the deploy (see Viasat VS3 antenna deploy failure).
It is an added cost, but it cannot be that much compared to the overall R&D/tooling/launch/ect cost.
alfiedotwtf
To be honest, I was expecting Elon and DOGE to have completely gutted NASA by now, while at the same time allocating more contracts to SpaceX.
temptemptemp111
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rickandmortyy
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metalman
450M is somewhere between .1% and 0 % of the total number of galaxies in the observable universe, so I am laying claim to 50, galaxies, which is hopefully a full set of galaxie types, but with a little haggling and trading, buying and selling galaxies I can figure that out later.
My Mom says as a child she sent away and got title to one sqare inch of the moon, but it was a much smaller universe then, especialy before inflation.