A brand new NASA area observatory is scheduled to launch into orbit this week on a lofty mission to map greater than 450 million galaxies.
The SPHEREx mission (quick for Spectro-Photometer for the Historical past of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) will map your entire sky 4 occasions over two years, providing scientists an opportunity to review how galaxies form and evolve, and offering a window into how the universe got here to be.
“It’s going to reply a elementary query: How did we get right here?” Shawn Domagal-Goldman, performing director of the astrophysics division at NASA headquarters, mentioned in a current information briefing.
The launch from Vandenberg Area Pressure Base in California was paused and postponed a number of hours earlier than a scheduled takeoff window that opened at 10:09 p.m. ET Saturday. The following window was but to be introduced, NASA said in an update Saturday night.
“The extra time will enable groups to proceed rocket checkouts forward of liftoff,” NASA mentioned.
Liftoff was initially deliberate for Feb. 27, however NASA rescheduled it a number of occasions, first to “full automobile processing and prelaunch checkouts,” and due to availability on the California launch web site.
The cone-shaped spacecraft — together with 4 suitcase-sized satellites that NASA will deploy on the identical time on a separate mission to review the solar — will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The $488 million SPHEREx mission, which has been in growth for a few decade, is designed to map the celestial sky in 102 infrared colours — greater than every other mission earlier than it, in keeping with NASA.
Infrared devices in area are perfect for piercing by mud and fuel to see among the universe’s oldest stars and galaxies, which might in any other case be obscured from view. (Colours within the infrared vary usually are not seen to folks as a result of infrared light has longer wavelengths than the attention can detect.)
Utilizing a way known as spectroscopy, scientists can cut up the infrared gentle from stars and galaxies into completely different colours, just like how daylight hitting a prism separates right into a rainbow of seen hues. An object’s spectra can reveal many helpful traits, together with its composition, density, temperature and movement.
The SPHEREx observatory will use its spectrometers to survey the sky in three dimensions and measure these traits in a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of galaxies, mentioned Jamie Bock, principal investigator of the SPHEREx mission and a professor of physics on the California Institute of Know-how.
Bock mentioned these observations may unlock solutions about galaxy formation and allow the observatory to analyze the origin of water and different natural supplies in our Milky Method galaxy.
“In splitting up the sunshine, we are able to use that to find out the space to galaxies, to construct up that three-dimensional map, and we additionally see the fingerprints of water,” Bock mentioned.
Tracing the origins of water couldn’t solely assist scientists work out how life advanced on Earth; the work may additionally yield clues about the place key substances for all times could also be discovered elsewhere in our galaxy.
“It is a new functionality, and with any new functionality comes the potential for discoveries and surprises,” Bock mentioned.
In charting the celestial sky, the SPHEREx mission may also deal with one among astronomy’s most enduring mysteries: What occurred within the first moments after the Big Bang that created the universe round 13.8 billion years in the past.
One idea, proposed within the late Nineteen Seventies and early Eighties, suggests the universe underwent a outstanding trillion-trillion-fold enlargement within the first fractions of a second after the Large Bang. The idea, often called cosmic inflation, has been used to clarify the universe’s flat geometry and lack of curvature, and as a potential purpose for a way among the largest buildings within the universe — galaxies and clusters of galaxies, as an example — got here to be.
However astronomers have lengthy struggled to piece collectively what drove cosmic inflation or why it occurred within the first place. The SPHEREx mission may take a look at the speculation in new methods, since figuring out the exact distribution of a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of galaxies would assist scientists hone in on the physics of cosmic inflation and the way such a fast enlargement could have occurred.
“What SPHEREx will do will take a look at sure fashions of inflation by tracing out in three dimensions a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of galaxies over your entire sky,” Brock mentioned.
Domagal-Goldman mentioned the SPHEREx mission’s examine of galaxies, cosmic inflation and the origins of the universe may advance humanity’s understanding of elementary physics.
“We’re very privileged within the lengthy story of the human existence on this planet to dwell at a time the place we are able to really reply questions in regards to the universe,” he mentioned.
