NASA is planning the upcoming SPHEREx mission from the beginning of 2019 and has just reached an important milestone: it is time to start construction. NASA says all design work has been completed and the design of the sky mapping telescope has been confirmed down to the smallest detail. When it finally reaches space, SPHEREx will scan the entire sky to tell us about the first phases of the universe. SPHEREx is part of NASA’s mid-range Explorers program, along with missions such as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) that monitors the Earth’s atmosphere. When all is said and done, SPHEREx (which means Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) could cost NASA nearly half a billion dollars, but that’s nothing more complicated than telescopes like the new $ 10 billion James Webb Space Telescope. NASA is currently planning to launch SPHEREx with the help of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It will operate for 25 months, following a polar orbit around the Earth. This will allow him to scan the entire sky four times with his unique instrument, a spectrophotometer with a tiny 8-inch primary mirror. Webb, on the other hand, has a record 6.5 meters (21 feet). SPHEREx is designed to collect infrared data from large areas of the sky instead of focusing on individual targets such as the Webb. So it can see 100 percent of the sky in a few years, while Hubble observed only 0.1 percent of the sky in more than three decades. SPHEREx will explore three astrophysical questions, including the origin of the universe, the formation of galaxies, and the abundance of water ice (all clinging to the acronym friendly name). It will scan the sky in 96 different color zones, giving astronomers a map that includes nearby newer galaxies as well as objects billions of light-years away from the early universe. This could be of great value to astronomers around the world. Having now completed the critical design review (or CDR as the agency calls it), NASA is ready to move from simulations to real hardware. COVID may have slowed the work, but not a single pandemic is stopping science. The mission could start in June 2024, but could be until April 2025. Read now:
