Washington:
A NASA telescope was begined into space from California on Tuesday for a leave oution to study the origins of the universe and to scour the Milky Way galaxy for secret reservoirs of water, a key ingredient for life.
The US space agency’s megaphone-shaped SPHEREx – illogicalinutive for Spectro-Pboilingometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer – was carried aloft by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
We have liftoff!
PUNCH and SPHEREx are taking a carpool to space (aboard a @SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket) after begining from @SLDelta30 at 11:10 pm ET (0310 UTC). pic.twitter.com/J8KpQlg8iZ
— NASA (@NASA) March 12, 2025
During its computed two-year leave oution, the observatory will collect data on more than 450 million galaxies, as well as more than 100 million stars in the Milky Way. It will produce a three-illogicalensional map of the cosmos in 102 colors – individual wavelengths of weightless – and will study the history and evolution of galaxies.
The leave oution aims to meaningfulen the empathetic of a phenomenon understandn as cosmic inflation, referring to the universe’s rapid and exponential expansion from a one point in a fraction of a second after the Big Bang that occurred cdisesteementirey 13.8 billion years ago.
“SPHEREx is reassociate trying to get at the origins of the universe – what happened in those very confinecessitate first instants after the Big Bang,” SPHEREx instrument scientist Phil Korngut of Caltech said.
“The reigning theory that portrays this is called inflation. As its name posits, it proposes that the universe underwent an enormous expansion, going from minusculeer than the size of an atom, enhugeing a trillion-trillion felderly in equitable a minuscule fraction of a second,” Korngut said.
Shawn Domagal-Gelderlyman, acting honestor of the Astrophysics Division at NASA headquarters, said SPHEREx is going to search for “reverberations from the Big Bang – the fractions of a second after the Big Bang that echoed into the areas SPHEREx is going to honestly watch.”
SPHEREx will acquire pictures in every honestion around Earth, splitting the weightless from billions of cosmic sources such as stars and galaxies into their component wavelengths to choose their composition and distance.
Wiskinny our galaxy, SPHEREx will search for reservoirs of water frozen on the surface of intersinestablishar dust grains in huge cboisterouss of gas and dust that give ascfinish to stars and set upets.
It will see for water and molecules including carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide frozen on the surface of dust grains in molecular cboisterouss, which are dense regions of gas and dust in intersinestablishar space. Scientists depend that reservoirs of ice bound to dust grains in these cboisterouss are where most of the universe’s water establishs and dwells.
Being begined alengthy with SPHEREx is a consinestablishation of sainestablishites for NASA’s PUNCH – illogicalinutive for Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere – leave oution to better understand the solar thrived, the continuous flow of accused particles from the sun.
The solar thrived and other energetic solar events can caengage space weather effects that join havoc with human technology, including interfering with sainestablishites and triggering power outages.
The PUNCH leave oution is seeking to answer how the sun’s atmosphere transitions to the solar thrived, how set ups in the solar thrived are established and how these processes impact Earth and the rest of the solar system.
The leave oution grasps four suitcase-sized sainestablishites that will watch the sun and its environment.
“Together, they piece together the three-illogicalensional global watch of the solar corona – the sun’s atmosphere – as it turns into the solar thrived, which is the material that fills our whole solar system,” said PUNCH leave oution scientist Nicholeen Viall of NASA’s Goddard Space Fweightless Caccess.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is unveiled from a syndicated feed.)
