NASA’s SPHEREx mission takes sky surveys to the next level by mapping the entire cosmos in 102 infrared wavelengths, creating a three-dimensional atlas of unprecedented depth. It will capture data on over 450 million galaxies and 100 million Milky Way stars.
SPHEREx, or Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, is all about spectroscopy—splitting light into its colors like a prism to reveal what stars and galaxies are made of. Unlike NASA’s older WISE telescope, which used just four infrared bands, SPHEREx boasts 102 wavelengths. “Since we’re scanning the whole sky, there’s something in SPHEREx’s data for every corner of astronomy,” says Rachel Akeson, who heads the SPHEREx Science Data Center at IPAC.
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The spacecraft’s design is beautifully simple, with no moving parts except for one-time pops of a sunshield and aperture cover. Three megaphone-shaped photon shields block out heat and light from the Sun and Earth, keeping the telescope’s sensors cold enough to catch faint infrared glows from far-off galaxies. A slight tilt lets it sweep the entire sky, grabbing around 3,600 unique shots daily. Each snap captures six images across 102 infrared shades, with every bright dot—a star or galaxy—packing over 100,000 sources per image. “Our spacecraft is wide awake, staring at the universe,” beams Olivier Doré, SPHEREx project scientist at Caltech and NASA’s JPL. “It’s doing exactly what we built it for.”
Over its two-year mission, SPHEREx will stitch hundreds of thousands of images into four epic all-sky maps. These mosaics will hit each spot in the sky 102 times through different infrared filters. This means scientists can zoom out to study a region’s full glow or zero in on specific wavelengths. “We’re diving into the universe’s tiniest early moments by looking at its biggest scales today,” says Jim Fanson, SPHEREx project manager at JPL.
The mission’s reach is staggering to say the least, charting galaxies so far away their light’s been traveling 10 billion years to reach us. By mapping them in 3D, SPHEREx is hunting for clues about cosmic inflation—that insane trillion-trillion-fold expansion right after the Big Bang.
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