A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying NASA’s SPHEREx and PUNCH spacecraft sits on SLC 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base on Saturday, March 9, 2025. Photo credit: SpaceX
NASA and SpaceX set a new launch date of no earlier than Monday, March 10 for the launch of the agency’s SPHEREx and PUNCH missions on a Falcon 9 rocket. With the change to Daylight Saving Time, the launch is now targeted for 11:10 p.m. EDT (8:10 p.m. PDT) from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The SPHEREx and PUNCH live launch broadcast will begin at 10:15 p.m., March 10, and stream live NASA+.
Visit the NASA website for more information about SPHEREx and PUNCH.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the SPHEREx and PUNCH payloads at the top encapsulated in the fairing stands erect on Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base on Saturday, March 8, 2025. Photo credit: SpaceX
NASA and SpaceX are standing down for tonight’s launch of the agency’s SPHEREx and PUNCH missions. The additional time will allow teams to continue rocket checkouts ahead of liftoff. A new launch date will be announced once confirmed on the range.
Visit the NASA website for more information about SPHEREx and PUNCH.
NASA and SpaceX now are targeting no earlier than Friday, March 7, for the launch of the agency’s SPHEREx and PUNCH missions due to the availability of a launch opportunity on the Western range.
The launch window opens at 10:09 p.m. EST (7:09 p.m. PST) from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The prelaunch news briefing now is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 6, with coverage streaming live on NASA+. Media may ask questions via phone. For the dial-in number and passcode, media should contact the Kennedy newsroom no later than one hour before the start of the event at ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov.
The SPHEREx and PUNCH live launch broadcast will begin at 9:15 p.m., Friday, March 7, and stream live on NASA+.
Visit the NASA website for more information about SPHEREx and PUNCH.
NASA’s SPHEREx space observatory was photographed at BAE Systems in Boulder, Colorado, in November 2024 after completing environmental testing. The spacecraft’s three concentric cones help direct heat and light away from the telescope and other components, keeping them cool. Credit: BAE Systems
NASA and SpaceX are targeting late February 2025 for the launch of the agency’s next astrophysics observatory, SPHEREx. Short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, SPHEREx will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
About the size of a subcompact car, SPHEREx will enter a polar orbit around Earth and create a map of the entire sky in 3D, taking images in every direction, like scanning the inside of a globe. The map will contain hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies, showing them in 102 colors (each a different wavelength of light).
Scientists will use SPHEREx’s all-sky map to achieve the mission’s three key science goals. The first is to shed light on a cosmic phenomenon called inflation, a brief but powerful cosmic event when space itself increased in size by a trillion-trillionfold less than a second after the big bang. The observatory will measure the distribution of hundreds of millions of galaxies to improve understanding of what drove inflation and of the physics behind this event.
The SPHEREx mission will also measure the collective glow from galaxies near and far, including light from hidden galaxies that haven’t been individually observed. This data will provide a more complete picture of all the objects and sources radiating in the universe.
Its third key science goal is to search the Milky Way galaxy for icy granules of water, carbon dioxide, and other essential building blocks of life. The mission will help scientists discover the location and abundance of these icy compounds in our galaxy, giving them a better sense of how likely they are to be incorporated into newly forming planets.
Launching as a secondary payload on the same Falcon 9 rocket as SPHEREx will be NASA’s PUNCH mission (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere). Led by Southwest Research Institute’s office in Boulder, Colorado, and managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, PUNCH is a constellation of four small satellites heading to low Earth orbit that will make global, 3D observations of the Sun’s corona to learn how the mass and energy there become solar wind.
NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center, manages the launch service for the SPHEREx and PUNCH missions.
