Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

NASA to launch SPHEREx mission to investigate the origins of our universe

Georgina Torbet
By
NASA’s Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission is targeted to launch in 2023. SPHEREx will help astronomers understand both how our universe evolved and how common are the ingredients for life in our galaxy’s planetary systems. Caltech

NASA is launching an ambitious new mission: To map the entire sky in order to understand the origins of the universe. The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission will launch in 2023 and is planned to last for two years, surveying hundreds of millions of galaxies both close to us and far away.

SPHEREx will use optical and near-infrared light to survey the sky, capturing data on over 300 million galaxies and the more than 100 million stars within our own galaxy. Its primary goal is to learn about how our universe evolved and how common the essential ingredients for life are in planetary systems in our galaxy. It will map the entire sky every six months to create a map in 96 color bands, and will be searching for water and organic molecules like methanol or acetone in regions where stars and being born and new planets are forming.

“This amazing mission will be a treasure trove of unique data for astronomers,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement. “It will deliver an unprecedented galactic map containing ‘fingerprints’ from the first moments in the universe’s history. And we’ll have new clues to one of the greatest mysteries in science: What made the universe expand so quickly less than a nanosecond after the big bang?”

A further function of SPHEREx will be to identify targets which can be studied in more detail by future missions such as the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope, which will be the world’s most powerful telescope when it launches — 100 times as powerful as Hubble.

The cost of the SPHEREx project is a hefty $242 million, which does not include launch costs. But NASA is confident that the mission will be worth it: “I’m really excited about this new mission,” said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine. “Not only does it expand the United States’ powerful fleet of space-based missions dedicated to uncovering the mysteries of the universe, it is a critical part of a balanced science program that includes missions of various sizes.”

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
How to track NASA’s Orion spacecraft on its voyage back to Earth
Orion's first image of Earth.
Orion spacecraft reenters moon’s gravity on its way home
A camera mounted on one of Orion’s four solar arrays captured this image of the Moon on flight day 17 of the 25.5-day Artemis I mission from a distance of more than 222,000 miles from Earth. Orion has exited the distant lunar orbit and is heading for a Dec. 11 splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
See Webb’s most beautiful image yet of the Pillars of Creation
By combining images of the iconic Pillars of Creation from two cameras aboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, the Universe has been framed in its infrared glory. Webb’s near-infrared image was fused with its mid-infrared image, setting this star-forming region ablaze with new details.
Hubble captures an open star cluster in a nearby satellite galaxy
Against a backdrop littered with tiny pinpricks of light glint a few, brighter stars. This whole collection is NGC 1858, an open star cluster in the northwest region of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way that boasts an abundance of star-forming regions. NGC 1858 is estimated to be around 10 million years old.clock
How to watch SpaceX launch its new Cargo Dragon capsule to ISS
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo capsule lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on the company’s 22nd Commercial Resupply Services mission to the International Space Station.
Orion spacecraft enters distant retrograde orbit around the moon
View of the Moon seen from ESA's European Service Module that is powering NASA's Orion spacecraft to the Moon and back, on flight day nine of the Artemis I mission, on 24 November 2022.
Strangely chonky exoplanet has astronomers puzzled
Artist’s conception of a gas giant exoplanet orbiting around a Sun-like star. The young exoplanet HD 114082 b revolves around its Sun-like star within 110 days at a distance of 0.5 astronomical units.
All the science that’s launching to the space station today
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with the company’s Dragon cargo spacecraft atop, is raised to a vertical position at NASA Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A on Nov. 21, 2022, in preparation for the 26th commercial resupply services launch to the International Space Station.
Listen to the spooky echoes of a black hole
The black hole in V404 Cygni is actively pulling material away from a companion star — with about half the mass of the Sun — into a disk around the invisible object. A burst of X-rays from the black hole detected in 2015 created the high-energy rings from a phenomenon known as light echoes, where light bounces off of dust clouds in between the system and Earth. In these images, X-rays from Chandra are shown, along with optical data from the Pan-STARRS telescope that depict the stars in the field of view.
Hubble captures a pair of galaxies merging into an unusual ring shape
The galaxy merger Arp-Madore 417-391 steals the spotlight in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The Arp-Madore catalog is a collection of particularly peculiar galaxies spread throughout the southern sky, and includes a collection of subtly interacting galaxies as well as more spectacular colliding galaxies. Arp-Madore 417-391, which lies around 670 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus in the southern celestial hemisphere, is one such galactic collision. The two galaxies were distorted by gravity and twisted into a colossal ring, leaving their cores nestled side by side.
See a stunning image of the Orion nebula stellar nursery
This infrared image of the Orion Nebula features plenty of dust but no stars. In these infrared wavelengths, it’s possible to see hot spots where new stars are forming, while unseen bright, massive stars have carved out caverns of empty space.
James Webb gets most detailed look yet at an exoplanet’s atmosphere
New observations of WASP-39b with the JWST have provided a clearer picture of the exoplanet, showing the presence of sodium, potassium, water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide in the planet's atmosphere. This artist's illustration also displays newly detected patches of clouds scattered across the planet.
SpaceX Dragon spacecraft delivers new solar arrays and more to ISS
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon cargo craft lifts off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to the International Space Station on Nov. 26, 2022.