JPL-Managed SPHEREx Observatory Successfully Launched from California

Two NASA missions that will expand our understanding of both the universe’s origins and our nearest star are now in orbit following a successful launch from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base yesterday.

NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) observatory and PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) satellites lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 8:10 p.m. PDT.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which manages the SPHEREx mission, confirmed communication was established with the observatory at 9:31 p.m. PDT. After approximately one month of systems checkout, SPHEREx will begin its two-year primary mission.

“Everything in NASA science is interconnected, and sending both SPHEREx and PUNCH up 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. “Congratulations to both mission teams as they explore the cosmos from far-out galaxies to our neighborhood star. I am excited to see the data returned in the years to come.”

“The fact our amazing SPHEREx team kept this mission on track even as the Southern California wildfires swept through our community is a testament to their remarkable commitment to deepening humanity’s understanding of our universe,” said Laurie Leshin, director of JPL. “We now eagerly await the scientific breakthroughs from SPHEREx’s all-sky survey — including insights into how the universe began and where the ingredients of life reside.”

SPHEREx will create a comprehensive 3D map of the entire celestial sky every six months using spectroscopy to measure the distance to 450 million galaxies. This data will provide insights into cosmic inflation that occurred fractions of a second after the big bang, as well as galaxy formation and evolution throughout cosmic time. The mission will also measure the total collective glow of all the galaxies in the universe, providing new insights about how galaxies have formed and evolved over cosmic history.

The observatory will also survey our home galaxy for reservoirs of frozen water ice and other molecules, like carbon dioxide, that are essential to life as we know it, complementing the detailed observations made by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope.

“Questions like ‘How did we get here?’ and ‘Are we alone?’ have been asked by humans for all of history,” said James Fanson, SPHEREx project manager at JPL. “I think it’s incredible that we are alive at a time when we have the scientific tools to actually start to answer them.”

The PUNCH mission, which shared the ride to orbit with SPHEREx, consists of four small satellites that successfully separated about 53 minutes after launch. Ground controllers have established communication with all four spacecraft, which will now begin a 90-day commissioning period where the satellites will enter the correct orbital formation and the instruments will be calibrated as a single “virtual instrument” before scientists start analyzing images of the solar wind.

Led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), PUNCH will make global, 3D observations of the Sun’s outer atmosphere (corona) and how it evolves into the solar wind. The mission will explore the formation and evolution of space weather events such as coronal mass ejections, which can create storms of energetic particle radiation that can endanger spacecraft and astronauts.

“The space between planets is not an empty void. It’s full of turbulent solar wind that washes over Earth,” said Craig DeForest, the mission’s principal investigator, at the Southwest Research Institute. “The PUNCH mission is designed to answer basic questions about how stars like our Sun produce stellar winds, and how they give rise to dangerous space weather events right here on Earth.”

Southwest Research Institute built the four spacecraft and Wide Field Imager instruments at its headquarters in San Antonio, Texas. The Naval Research Laboratory in Washington built the Narrow Field Imager instrument. The mission is operated from SwRI’s offices in Boulder, Colorado, and is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

Both missions will operate in a low-Earth, Sun-synchronous orbit over the day-night line (the terminator), allowing SPHEREx to keep its telescope shielded from the Sun’s light and heat (which would inhibit its observations) while giving PUNCH a clear view in all directions around our star.

A team of scientists will conduct the science analysis of SPHEREx data at 10 institutions across the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available through the NASA-IPAC Infrared Science Archive.

The SPHEREx mission’s principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and spacecraft bus.

NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, provided launch services for both missions.

For more information about these and other NASA science missions, visit: http://science.nasa.gov