NASA's SPHEREx space telescope has been tucked inside a custom-built chamber on and off for the past two months undergoing tests to prepare it for its two-year mission in space. SPHEREx, which stands for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, is set to launch into orbit around Earth no later than April 2025. It will map the entire sky in infrared wavelengths of light, capturing not only images of hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies but spectra for these objects as well. Spectra are created by instruments that break apart light into a rainbow of wavelengths, revealing new details about a cosmic object's composition, distance, and more.
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The SPHEREx observatory is now fully assembled and ready to enter its environmental test campaign.
Read MoreThe final assembly of the SPHEREx observatory has began.
Read MorePhil Korngut tests NASA’s SPHEREx telescope under extreme conditions in the SPHEREx laboratory in California.
Read MoreThe SPHEREx List of ICE Sources (SPLICEs), just published by a team led by CfA astronomers Matthew Ashby and Joseph Hora, presents a catalog of 8.9 million objects of interest for the upcoming SPHEREx Ices investigation.
Read MoreKey elements are coming together for NASA’s SPHEREx mission, a space telescope that will create a map of the universe like none before. NASA’s SPHEREx space telescope is beginning to look much like it will when it arrives in Earth orbit and starts mapping the entire sky.
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