National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is gearing up to answer some major questions about the history of the universe with latest space observatory launch.
The release of the observatory into orbit is scheduled for Thursday night, February 27, 2025, with a magnificent mission to outline more than 450 million galaxies.
As reported by NBC, the SPHEREx mission (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Re-ionization and Ices Explorer) is expected to navigate the entire sky four times over two years.
The mission would allow scientists to study how galaxies are formed and evolved, providing a window into how the universe came to be.
Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director of the astrophysics division at NASA headquarters shared in a recent briefing, "It’s going to answer a fundamental question: How did we get here?"
When is the launch
SPHEREx would be sent off into the space on Thursday at around 10:09 p.m. ET from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The cone-shaped spacecraft will be accompanied with four suitcase-sized satellites that NASA would be deploying at the same time on a mission to sun.
Using infrared instruments
The $488 million worth mission, which has been in development for about a decade, is designed to map the celestial sky in 102 infrared colours.
Infrared instruments in space are ideal for penetrating through dust and gas to see some of the universe's oldest stars and galaxies.
Similar to how sunlight hitting a prism separates into a rainbow of visible hues, the mission will be using a technique called spectroscopy, where scientists would be able to split the infrared light from stars and galaxies into different colours.
An object’s spectra can reveal many key characteristics, including, its temperature, motion, density and composition.
As per Jamie Bock, principal investigator of the SPHEREx mission and physics professor at the California Institute of Technology, the observatory will use its spectrometers to overview the sky in three-dimensions and measures the characteristics in hundreds of millions of galaxies.
How the SPHEREx mission will help in the study of galaxies
The mission would be able to initiate the investigation of water origin and other organic materials in the Milky Way galaxy.
Furthermore, SPHEREx is also expected to solve one of the oldest mysteries surrounding the universe: What happened in the first moments after the Big Bang, which created the universe around 13.8 billion years ago.
SPHEREx mission to study galaxies, origin of the universe and cosmic inflation could advance humanity's understanding of the the universe like never before.
