NASA’s New Space Telescope to Uncover Big Bang Secrets

The Big Bang Theory is a cosmological model describing how our current observable universe came into being. But there’s still a lot to learn about the concept, especially in regards to what happened in the first microseconds after the big bang itself. What happened in that split second when our universe appeared? NASA wants to know.

To do this, the space agency has designed a space telescope that will be able to probe the universe in search of evidence of those early moments.

Currently wearing the extremely cool moniker SPHEREx (short for “Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, the Era of Reionization and the Ice Explorer”) NASA has announced that it is making good progress with its plan to build the telescope.

Next Steps: Start working on a final design and start building the thing, for launch between 2024 and 2025.

The SPHEREx Space Telescope is expected to be the size of a “subcompact car” and, according to a recent NASA publication, “will map the entire sky four times, creating a massive database of stars, galaxies, nebulae (clouds of gas and dust in space), and many other celestial objects. “

If all goes according to plan, SPHEREx will be the very first NASA mission to create a “near infrared full sky spectroscopy map”, observing a total of 102 near infrared colors.

“It’s like going from black and white images to color,” said Allen Farrington, SPHEREx project manager.

SPHEREx’s first priority is to look for evidence of something NASA says “could have happened less than a billionth of a billionth of a second after the big bang.”

By mapping billions of galaxies across the universe, NASA hopes to find statistical models that can help explain what happened immediately after the Big Bang, when the universe rapidly expanded. The newly created map will also help search for water ice and frozen organic molecules around newly formed stars.

SPHEREx also hopes to learn more about the formation of galaxies and may be able to find out how some of the earliest galaxies created stars.

You can read more about the SPHEREx mission here.