SPHEREx: Part of a Lineage of NASA Space Telescopes
In this illustration, NASA's SPHEREx mission is highlighted among a line of other NASA space telescopes. The mission will survey the entire sky using spectroscopy, detecting hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies and generating a valuable data set that will complement the work of other NASA observatories such as those depicted here. Shown from left to right (and not to scale) are:
- Hubble Space Telescope, launched in April 1990
- Spitzer Space Telescope, launch in August 2003
- WISE (Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer), launched in December 2009
- James Webb Space Telescope, launched in December 2021
- SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer), targeted for launch in February 2025
- Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, targeted for launch by May 2027
The SPHEREx observatory will image the entire sky in 102 colors (each an individual wavelength of light) to help scientists answer big-picture questions about the origins of our universe, galaxies, and key ingredients for life in our galaxy, such as water.
SPHEREx is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the Astrophysics Division within the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA. The mission principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available.
For more information about the SPHEREx mission visit: science.nasa.gov/mission/spherex