National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is tentatively scheduled to launch its new megaphone-shaped space telescope aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
About SPHEREx Telescope:
The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) telescope is a megaphone-shaped telescope.
Tenure: 2 year
Aims of SPHEREx:
It will map the universe while detecting two kinds of cosmic light, optical and infrared.
It will measure something called cosmic inflation.
Cosmic inflation refers to a period which took place around 14 billion years ago, during which the universe expanded faster than the speed of light for a fraction of a second.
It will help better understand things about the formation of the universe, the growth of all galaxies across cosmic history, and the location of water and life-forming molecules in the Milky Way galaxy.
It will use spectroscopic images to measure the 3D positions of about 450 million galaxies across cosmic history.
It will complement the work being done by other infrared telescopes in space, such as the James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope.
Significance of this Initiative:
Mapping the whole sky enables astronomers to identify promising regions for life and gather large-scale data to separate meaningful patterns from anomalies, making this mission a transformative step in the search for life beyond Earth.
One can determine the necessary conditions to form biogenic molecules in space. In turn, this can tell about a crucial step in how life came to be.
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