Water’s Origins
SPHEREx will measure the abundance of frozen water, carbon dioxide, and other essential ingredients for life as we know it along more than 9 million unique directions across the Milky Way galaxy. This information will help scientists better understand how available these key molecules are to forming planets. Research indicates that most of the water in our galaxy is in the form of ice rather than gas, frozen to the surface of small dust grains. In dense clouds where stars form, these icy dust grains can become part of newly forming planets, with the potential to create oceans like the ones on Earth.
The mission’s colorful view will enable scientists to identify these materials, because chemical elements and molecules leave a unique signature in the colors they absorb and emit.
Big Picture
Many space telescopes, including NASA’s and , can provide high-resolution, in-depth spectroscopy of individual objects or small sections of space. Other space telescopes, like NASA’s retired (WISE), were designed to take images of the whole sky. SPHEREx combines these abilities to apply spectroscopy to the entire sky.
👇👇👇👇 [Google Ads]
By combining observations from telescopes that target specific parts of the sky with SPHEREx’s big-picture view, scientists will get a more complete — and more colorful — perspective of the universe.
More About SPHEREx
SPHEREx is managed by JPL for NASA’s Astrophysics Division within the 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 across the U.S. and in South Korea. Data will be processed and archived at 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:
👇👇👇👇 [Google Ads]
Feed By Today and Features – NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
👇👇👇👇 [Google Ads]
You Might Also Like
Live updates: Rudy Giuliani ordered to pay nearly $150 million in damages
NASA to Preview Sky-Mapping Space Telescope Ahead of Launch
