Category: Kennedy Space Center

NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) mission controllers on Earth have received full acquisition of signal from the observatory, indicating the spacecraft is functioning nominally and is power positive. 

In the weeks ahead, the SPHEREx team will prepare the observatory for its survey operations – conducting calibrations, cooling the telescope to its designed operating temperature, and characterizing its optical performance in space. 

Over a two-year planned mission, SPHEREx will then collect data on more than 450 million galaxies along with more than 100 million stars in the Milky Way in order to explore the origins of the universe, contributing to NASA Science’s key goals to discover the secrets of the universe and search for life elsewhere. 

The mission’s 3D all-sky map will help scientists answer big-picture questions about the universe. The mission will investigate a cosmic phenomenon called inflation that caused the universe to expand rapidly for a fraction of a second after the big bang, measure the collective glow created by galaxies near and far, including hidden galaxies that have not been individually observed, and search the Milky Way galaxy for hidden reservoirs of water, carbon dioxide, and other essential ingredients for life. 

The SPHEREx mission’s ability to scan large sections of the sky quickly and gather data on millions of objects complements the work of more targeted telescopes, like NASA’s Hubble and James Webb, and the observatory’s data will be freely available to scientists around the world, providing a new encyclopedia of information about hundreds of millions of cosmic objects. 

Join the online conversation and get mission updates from these accounts: 

X: @NASA, @NASAJPL, @NASAUniverse, @NASASun, @NASAKennedy, @NASA_LSP 
Facebook: NASA, NASA’s JPL, NASA Universe, NASASunScience, NASA’s Launch Services Program
Instagram: @NASA, @NASAKennedy, @NASAJPL, @NASAUniverse 

For more information about the SPHEREx and PUNCH missions, visit: 

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/spherex/ 

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/punch/ 

This concludes NASA’s live launch coverage. 

Deployment of the PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission’s four satellites has occurred. 

Following a 90-day commissioning period, the PUNCH mission is scheduled to conduct science for at least two years. 

NASA’s PUNCH will observe the Sun’s corona as it transitions into the solar wind, supporting NASA Science’s key goals by creating a broad awareness and understanding of how the Sun creates conditions that influence Earth and space, which is increasingly part of the human domain. 

By providing scientists with new information about how these potentially disruptive solar events form and evolve, data from PUNCH could lead to more accurate prediction about the arrival and impact of such events on Earth and for humanity’s robotic explorers in space.

Starting in about 20 minutes, PUNCH mission teams will start the process of acquiring signals from each of the four spacecraft to confirm they are functioning nominally. 

For continued updates on the PUNCH mission, visit the mission blog: 

https://blogs.nasa.gov/punch/ 

NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) observatory has separated from the Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage, on its way to begin its science mission from a sun-synchronous orbit about 404 miles (650 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface. 

In about 10 minutes, deployment of the PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission’s four satellites will begin. 

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage has successfully landed at Vandenberg Space Force Base’s Landing Zone 4 in California. Meanwhile, the engine in the Falcon 9’s second stage has cut off. 

The next milestone will be when the SPHEREx observatory separates from the rocket’s second stage in about 30 minutes.   

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket’s nine Merlin engines have finished their burn, and the first stage has separated from the rocket. As the second stage continues carrying SPHEREx and PUNCH to orbit, the rocket’s first stage will attempt a controlled landing at Vandenberg Space Force Base’s Landing Zone 4. 

Ignition, and liftoff! At 11:10 p.m. EDT (8:10 p.m. PDT), SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base’s Space Launch Complex 4 East, carrying NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) and PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) missions. 

Stay here on the blog as we take you through some key flight milestones, coming up in the next couple of minutes. 

NASA Launch Manager Dr. Denton Gibson has just given the final “go” for launch of NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) observatory and PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) satellites!

The spacecraft is on internal power and configured for launch. In the next few moments, the rocket’s autonomous internal flight computers will take over the launch countdown, and the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket’s nine Merlin engines will roar to life, sending SPHEREx and PUNCH on the start of their journeys to scientific discovery. 

With launch just under 10 minutes away, let’s take a closer look at some important numbers for NASA’s newest space observatory, SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer), which will help answer big questions about the early universe, the history of galaxies, and the life-sustaining molecules in planet-forming regions of the Milky Way. 

• 14 billion – SPHEREx will shed light on a cosmic phenomenon called inflation, occurring almost 14 billion years ago, when in the first billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the big bang, the universe increased in size by a trillion-trillionfold.
• 450 million – SPHEREx will map the distribution of more than 450 million galaxies, to help scientists improve our understanding of the physics behind this extreme cosmic event.
• 11,000 – SPHEREx will complete more than 11,000 orbits over the duration of planned survey operations.
• 600 – The spacecraft will take up to about 600 exposures per day, allowing it to complete four all-sky spectroscopic surveys during its two-year prime mission. 
• 404 – The SPHEREx spacecraft will orbit Earth about 404 miles (650 kilometers) overhead. 
• 360 – Each orbit allows the telescope to image a 360-degree strip of the celestial sky. 
• 102 – SPHEREx will gather information about the composition of and distance to millions of galaxies and stars in 102 wavelengths of infrared light. 
• 98 – Each Sun-synchronous orbit of SPHEREx will take approximately 98 minutes. 
• 91 – By remaining over Earth’s day-night line (or terminator) for the entire mission, the observatory will keep the conical photon shields that surround its telescope pointed at least 91 degrees away from the Sun to avoid its light and heat. 
• 27 – The baseline mission for SPHEREx covers 27 months, including launch, one month of in-orbit checkout, 25 months of survey operations, and one month of decommissioning activities. 
• 14.5 – The observatory will circle the Earth about 14.5 times per day. 
• Six – SPHEREx will complete an all-sky map within six months. 
• Four – SPHEREx will complete four all-sky maps during its mission. 

SpaceX confirms that fueling for the Falcon 9’s second stage carrying NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) and PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) missions is underway at Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. 

The Falcon 9 Merlin engines — originally designed for recovery and reuse — use RP-1 and liquid oxygen as rocket propellants in a gas-generator power cycle. 

In several minutes, engine chill will begin on the rocket in preparation for launch, followed by the rocket and spacecraft transitioning to internal power. 

This will be NASA’s Launch Services Program 11th mission using a SpaceX rocket, and the program’s 106th end-to-end science mission. 

Liftoff is just over 10 minutes away. 

Launching as a rideshare with NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer), NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) is made up of four 140-pound small satellites, each about 1 x 2 x 3 feet in size, which will be synchronized to serve as a single “virtual instrument” that spans the whole PUNCH constellation. 

Three of the PUNCH satellites will each carry a Wide Field Imager, a heliospheric imager that reduces direct sunlight by over 16 orders of magnitude, which is like the ratio between the mass of a human and the mass of a cold virus. The Wide Field Imager will provide views from 18 to 180 solar radii (45 degrees) away from the Sun in the sky. The wide-field imaging optics are based on the design of Nagler eyepieces, which are known among observational astronomers for their clarity, low distortion, wide field, and achromatic focus. 

The fourth PUNCH satellite will carry the Narrow Field Imager, a coronagraph that blocks out the bright light from the Sun to better see details in the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona. The coronagraph will have a field of view from 6 to 32 solar radii in the sky, and it will view the corona in both polarized and unpolarized light. 

Every four minutes, each camera will collect three raw images through three different polarizing filters. In addition, each camera will take a clear (unpolarized) image every eight minutes, which will help calibrate the polarized images. The PUNCH mission will downlink data multiple times a day via ground-based antennas on Earth that are managed by the Swedish Space Corporation. Then, the data will be sent to the mission operations center at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, which will share it with the science operations center, also at SwRI.