NASA's latest advanced telescope will embark on a yearslong mission as early as today, with a launch window opening just after 10 pm ET from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base.
Known as SPHEREx, the telescope will orbit roughly 400 miles above the Earth's surface and complement NASA's other best-in-class tools, like the James Webb Space Telescope. While the powerful Webb can provide unprecedented resolution of specific targets, SPHEREx is an "all-sky" survey that will map the entire celestial sky four times over the course of two years.
SPHEREx will collect light largely in the near-infrared range, some arriving from as early as 10 billion years ago. Researchers hope to understand the distribution of galaxies during the early universe, providing insight into cosmic expansion after the Big Bang. The mission will also study how the earliest stars formed and how much (and where) water and organic molecules are present.
See a livestream of liftoff here.
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