Falcon 9 launch of SPHEREx and PUNCH missions rescheduled to Tuesday evening
VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif. – SpaceX has designated a new launch time for NASA's SPHEREx Observatory and PUNCH satellites launch for Tuesday, March 11 at 8:10 p.m.
A backup launch window has been announced for the next day, Wednesday, March 12, at the same time stated SpaceX.
About eight minutes after liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base, the Falcon 9 first-stage booster will return to land at the military base and residents are warned they may hear a sonic boom shared SpaceX.
A live webcast of the launch will go live about an hour before liftoff and can be watched here.
The two-year Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer mission -or SPHEREx- will, like the name states, study the structure of the universe and search for the molecules that are the basis of life as we know it explained NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The SPHEREx mission will use images collected in the infrared range using a technique called spectroscopy to split light into 102 colors, or different wavelengths like a prism, much more than what the human eye can see.
Those additional wavelengths of light will allow the SPHEREx mission to detect chemical compounds and molecules that have unique color signatures that they absorb and emit.
While existing space telescopes like the Hubble or James Webb can gather targeted information about parts of the universe, the SPHEREx mission will scan the entire breadth of the sky, collecting information on billions of stars and revealing trends in data that did not previously exist.
The image below, courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech, shows some of NASA's current space telescope fleet. From left to right: Hubble, Spitzer, WISE, Webb, SPHEREx, and Roman.
You may have noticed that SPHEREx does not have the same shape as other space telescopes.
That is because SPHEREx's telescope and detectors need to be around negative 350 degrees Fahrenheit (negative 210 degrees Celsius) to operate explained NASA.
Temperatures above that level would cause the instruments to generate their own infrared glow that might crowd out the faint light from distance sources being observed.
SPHEREx does not rely on an active cooling system and instead, uses three cone-shaped photon shields to protect the telescope from heat coming from the Sun and Earth and a mirrored structure underneath the shields directs heat from the internal instruments out into space.
Another key aspect of the SPHEREx mission is that it will determine the distance of galaxies to create a three-dimensional map like never before.
According to NASA, mapping in the infrared spectrum will create a new encyclopedia about hundreds of millions of celestial objects -such as stars, galaxies, and asteroids-that have not been observed using the spectroscopy technique before and researchers from around the globe will be able to access the new observations from anywhere on Earth.
The image below is a simulation of the large-scale structure of the universe from NASA/GSFC/AVL NCSA where each point of light are groups of galaxies.
Another mission will also be launched on the Falcon 9 booster.
The PUNCH -or Polarmeter to Unify the Corona and Helioshpere- mission will use a constellation of four small satellites to make three-dimensional observations of the entire inner heliosphere of the sun from low-Earth orbit to learn more about how the sun's corona becomes the ejected charged particles we call solar winds.
This will be the third flight for the Falcon 9 assigned to this mission which previously launched NROL-126 and Transporter-12 missions.
