Liftoff! NASA launches SPHEREx telescope — an infrared observatory that will help JWST solve the mysteries of the universe

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NASA's newly-launched SPHEREx space telescope will offer a complementary 'panoramic' view to the JWST's high resolution infrared snapshots, enabling astronomers to study some of the universe's biggest mysteries.

An artist's illustration of SPHEREx orbiting above Earth.
An artist's illustration of SPHEREx orbiting above Earth. (Image credit: NASA)

NASA has launched a new infrared space telescope into orbit that is set to rival the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in its unprecedented view of our universe.

The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) blasted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on March 11. at 11:10 p.m. EST.

This makes SPHEREx the perfect complement for the JWST, flagging regions of interest for the latter to study with greater depth and resolution.

"Taking a snapshot with JWST is like taking a picture of a person," Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters, told reporters during a news conference on Jan. 31. "What SPHEREx and other survey missions can do is almost like going into panorama mode, when you want to catch a big group of people and the things standing behind or around them."

Related: Euclid space telescope: ESA's groundbreaking mission to study dark matter and dark energy

SPHEREx, which cost a total of $488 million and has been in development for roughly a decade, is set to map the universe by observing both optical and infrared light. It will orbit the Earth 14.5 times a day, completing 11,000 orbits during its lifetime to filter infrared light from distant gas and dust clouds using a technique called spectroscopy.

By peering through these clouds, the scientists operating the cone-shaped telescope hope to piece together an unprecedented picture of our cosmos using some of its most ancient light.

This will enable astronomers to study galaxies at various stages in their evolution; trace the ice floating in empty space to see how life may have begun; and even understand the period of rapid inflation the universe underwent immediately after the Big Bang.

"Literally a trillionth of a trillionth of a billionth of a second after the Big Bang, the observable universe went through a remarkable expansion," Jamie Bock, principal investigator of SPHEREx at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said during the news conference. "Expanding a trillion trillion fold, and that expansion expanded tiny fluctuations smaller than an atom, to enormous cosmological scales that we see today... We still don't know what drove inflation or why it happened."

SPHEREx isn't the only payload aboard the rocket. The rocket is also carrying thePolarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) instrument, which will study how the sun's corona — its outermost layer of plasma — streams across our solar system in the form of solar wind.

"We expect we'll revolutionize how space weather is forecasted," Craig DeForest, a heliophysicist at the Southwest Research Institute and the PUNCH mission's principal investigator, said during a Feb. 13 news conference. "We're the first mission able to track space-weather events in three dimensions."

Ben Turner
Ben Turner
Acting Trending News Editor

Ben Turner is a U.K. based writer and editor at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, tech and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist. When he's not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing the guitar and embarrassing himself with chess.

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