Leshin: "We now await the scientific discoveries of the investigation, including insights into how the universe began and where the ingredients of life reside..."

NASA’s newest astrophysical observatory, SPHEREx, is on its way to study the origins of our universe and the history of galaxies, and to search for the ingredients of life in our galaxy. Short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer, SPHEREx blasted off at 8:10 pm PDT on March 11 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Along with SPHEREx aboard the Falcon 9, NASA said today, were four small satellites that make up the agency's PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, which will study how the Sun's outer atmosphere is transformed into solar wind.

“Everything in NASA science is interconnected, and sending SPHEREx and Punch on a single rocket doubles the opportunities to do incredible science in space", said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Ground controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which operates SPHEREx, established communications with the space observatory at 9:31 pm PDT. The observatory will begin its two-year prime mission after a roughly monthlong checkout period, during which engineers and scientists will ensure the spacecraft is operating properly.

“The fact that our extraordinary SPHEREx team kept this mission on track even as the Southern California wildfires swept through our community is a testament to their extraordinary commitment to deepening humanity’s understanding of the universe", said Laurie Leshin, director of NASA-JPL. “We now look forward to the scientific discoveries from SPHEREx’s all-sky survey, including insights into how the universe began and where the ingredients for life lie".

The Punch satellites successfully separated about 53 minutes after launch, and ground controllers have established communication with all four Punch spacecraft. Punch now begins a 90-day commissioning period in which the four satellites will enter proper orbital formation, and the instruments will be calibrated as a single “virtual instrument” before scientists begin analyzing images of the solar wind. The two missions are designed to operate in low Earth orbit and sun-synchronous orbit on a day-night line, so that the Sun always remains in the same position relative to the spacecraft. This is essential for SPHEREx to keep its telescope shielded from the Sun’s light and heat (both of which would inhibit its observations) and for Punch to have an unobstructed view in all directions around the Sun.

To achieve its far-reaching science goals, SPHEREx will create a 3D map of the entire celestial sky every six months, providing a broad perspective to complement the work of space telescopes that observe smaller sections of the sky in greater detail, such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope.

The mission will use a technique called spectroscopy to measure the distances to 450 million galaxies in the nearby universe. Their large-scale distribution has been subtly influenced by an event that occurred nearly 14 billion years ago, known as “inflation", which caused the universe to expand a trillion trillion times in a fraction of a second after the big bang. The mission will also measure the total collective glow of all galaxies in the universe, providing new insights into how galaxies formed and evolved over cosmic time.

Spectroscopy can also reveal the composition of cosmic objects, and SPHEREx will scan our galaxy for hidden reserves of water ice, ice, and other molecules such as carbon dioxide that are essential to life as we know it.

“Questions like, ‘How did we get here?’ and ‘Are we alone?’ have been asked by humans throughout history", said James Fanson, SPHEREx project manager at JPL. “I think we now have the scientific tools to actually start answering those questions".

Punch will make global 3D observations of the inner solar system and the Sun's outer atmosphere, the "corona", to learn how its mass and energy become the solar wind, a stream of charged particles blowing outward from the Sun in all directions. The mission will explore the formation and evolution of space weather events such as coronal mass ejections, which can create radiation storms of energetic particles that can endanger spacecraft and astronauts.

"The space between the planets is not an empty void. It's filled with turbulent solar winds that slam into Earth", said Craig DeForest, the mission's principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute. "Punch is designed to answer fundamental questions about how stars like our Sun produce stellar winds and how they create dangerous space weather events right here on Earth".

Below, the official video released by NASA: