NASA has launched a powerful new space telescope, SPHEREx, designed to survey the entire sky and study the faint glow of hundreds of millions of galaxies.
The telescope was launched on Tuesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base. The mission aims to create the most detailed infrared cosmos map, offering new insights into galaxy formation and the universe’s expansion.
Unlike NASA’s Hubble and Webb telescopes, which focus on capturing sharp images of individual galaxies, SPHEREx will take a broader approach.
We have liftoff!
PUNCH and SPHEREx are taking a carpool to space (aboard a @SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket) after launching from @SLDelta30 at 11:10 pm ET (0310 UTC). pic.twitter.com/J8KpQlg8iZ
— NASA (@NASA) March 12, 2025
Instead of focusing on specific targets, it will measure the total light emitted by galaxies across cosmic history, including the earliest ones formed after the Big Bang.
“This cosmological glow captures all light emitted over cosmic history,” said Jamie Bock, the mission’s lead scientist at the California Institute of Technology. “It’s a very different way of looking at the universe.”
The $488 million mission will aid scientists in understanding the evolution of galaxies over billions of years and uncover clues about the universe’s expansion in its earliest moments.
SPHEREx, approximately the size and weight of a grand piano, will orbit Earth at 400 miles (650 kilometers). Using its infrared sensors, the telescope will scan the sky every six months, completing four full-sky surveys over two years.
That’s not a giant meteor. It’s SPHEREx and PUNCH, two @NASA missions, being sent up into space via a Falcon 9 @SpaceX rocket!! SPHEREx is a mission that’ll survey over 450 million galaxies to uncover the history of the universe and how it evolved. The PUNCH mission will study… pic.twitter.com/afIR7zcufa
— Sophia Gad-Nasr (@Astropartigirl) March 12, 2025
Its advanced detectors can distinguish 102 different colors of light, many of which are invisible to the human eye. The data collected will create the most comprehensive and colorful infrared map of the cosmos to date.
Beth Fabinsky, deputy project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said it’s like “looking at the universe through a set of rainbow-colored glasses.”
While its primary focus is on distant galaxies, SPHEREx will also explore regions closer to home. It will search for water and other key materials in the icy clouds between stars in the Milky Way, where new solar systems are forming.
Scientists hope this will help us understand how planets, including potentially habitable ones, come into existence. The telescope was not the only payload aboard Tuesday’s launch. Four suitcase-sized satellites designed to study the sun also hitched a ride on the Falcon 9 rocket.
View of @NASA‘s SPHEREx and Earth shortly after deployment pic.twitter.com/TT2pyVX43Q
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 12, 2025
After reaching space, SPHEREx separated from the rocket’s upper stage and drifted into orbit, with Earth’s blue surface in the background.
Scientists believe the telescope’s infrared vision will help uncover the conditions that shaped the first galaxies. By studying how their collective light has changed, the researchers hope to gain a deeper understanding of the forces that shaped the cosmos over time.
“We won’t see the big bang,” Bock said. “But we’ll see the aftermath from it and learn about the beginning of the universe that way.”
SPHEREx is now in a position to begin its ambitious survey. Over the next two years, its findings could change how we understand the universe’s structure and history.
