SpaceX won contract to launch NASA’s SPHEREx

SpaceX can have a lot of conflicting things, but you have to admit one thing: NASA agrees. So much so that he will use SpaceX as the launcher of the SPHEREx program.

The SPHEREx project is really cool. The name means Spectro-Photometer for the history of the universe, the era of reionization and the Ices Explorer (you can see why a title was needed), it aims to answer two big questions. First, it should help us understand how our universe evolved. Second, it’s designed to track the building blocks of life across the galaxy – roughly how often are certain elements found and in what combinations do they need to appear in order for life to occur?

Here is more information about None:

SPHEREx will be able to collect optical and near infrared light from the mindA huge number of sources: over 100 million stars in the Milky Way itself and over 300 million other galaxies. You will succeed in tackling two different questions of the same substance in these two different areas.

In total, SPHEREx will scan the entire sky and collect data at 96 different wavelengths of light. Within our Milky Way galaxy, SPHEREx will map water and organic molecules, which are two essential components of life as we know it. And beyond our galaxy, It will go back to the first moments of our universe. Scientists will be able to use its data to prioritize surveillance targets for other space telescope missions in the future, including the James Webb Space Telescope and the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope.

Hopefully the probe will be launched in early 2024, as it travels on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. NASA will still handle the launch, and NASA will still be responsible for all data – it just needs SpaceX to get out of the atmosphere.

With the money he had to pay SpaceX, we envision a mission that costs around $ 98.8 million – that sounds like a lot, but it might be a small price to pay for learning more about the mysteries of the universe.