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NASA Selects Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California, to Provide Launch Services
The total cost of the SPHEREx launch to NASA is approximately $ 98.8 million, including launch services and other mission-related costs.
The SPHEREx mission is currently aiming to launch as early as June 2024 on a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex-4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The ship will go into space aboard a rocketSpaceX's Falcon 9, scheduled to launch in June 2024 from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The launch will be carried out by the NASA Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. However, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory remains responsible for overall project management, systems engineering, integration, testing and mission operations, the agency said in a statement.
What will the mission study?
SPHEREx is a planned two-yearan astrophysical mission to study the sky in near-infrared light, which, although invisible to the human eye, serves as a powerful tool for answering cosmic questions related to the birth of the Universe and its subsequent development.
He will also look for waterand organic molecules—essential to life as we know it—in regions where stars are born from gas and dust, known as stellar nurseries, as well as disks around stars where new planets can form. Astronomers will use this mission to collect data on more than 300 million galaxies, as well as more than 100 million stars in our Milky Way galaxy.
Spectro-Photometer Mission for the History of the Universe,Reionization Era and Ice Explorer (SPHEREx) is a planned two-year mission funded in the amount of $ 242 million (not including launch costs).
SPHEREx will explore the sky optically whilealso in near infrared light, which, although invisible to the human eye, serves as a powerful tool for answering cosmic questions. Astronomers will use this mission to collect data on over 300 million galaxies as well as over 100 million stars in our own Milky Way.
SPHEREx will explore hundreds of millionsgalaxies near and far, some of them taking 10 billion years to reach Earth. In the Milky Way, the mission will look for water and organic molecules—necessary for life as we know it—in stellar nurseries, regions where stars are born from gas and dust, and in the disks around stars , where new planets can form.
Every six months, SPHEREx will surveythe entire sky using technologies adapted for Earth satellites and interplanetary spaceships. The mission will create a full sky map in 96 different color bands, far exceeding the color resolution of previous all sky maps. It will also identify targets for more detailed exploration by future missions such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and Wide-Angle Infrared Observation Telescope.
SPHEREx PI Dr. Jamie Bock is investigating.California Institute of Technology and Jet Propulsion Laboratory will develop the SPHEREx payload. The spacecraft will be supplied by Ball Aerospace. The Korea Institute of Astronomy and Space Sciences will provide a non-flying cryogenic test chamber. The data will be published in the Infrared Data Processing and Analysis Center. In addition to CalTech / JPL and international scientists, the SPHEREx team includes scientists from institutions across the country, including UC Irvine, Ohio State University, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Arizona State University, University of Arizona, Rochester Institute of Technology, Argonne National laboratories and Johns Hopkins University.
How will SPHEREx work?
The SPHEREx astrophysical mission is planned fortwo years. During this time, the researchers want to use a telescope for the first time in the world to create a spectrometry map of the entire sky in the near infrared range. In this way, scientists will split near-infrared light into individual wavelengths or colors - like a prism breaks sunlight into its component colors.
Such research can show wherethe object consists, since some chemical elements absorb and emit light of a certain length, and will determine the distance of the object to the Earth, so the map will be three-dimensional.
By itself, optical spectroscopy isspectroscopy in the optical (visible) wavelength range with adjacent ultraviolet and infrared ranges (from several hundred nanometers to microns). This method obtained the overwhelming majority of information about how matter is arranged at the atomic and molecular levels, how atoms and molecules behave when combined into condensed substances.
Feature of optical spectroscopy, according toin comparison with other types of spectroscopy, is that the majority of structurally organized matter (larger than atoms) resonantly interacts with the electromagnetic field in the optical frequency range. Therefore, optical spectroscopy is now very widely used to obtain information about a substance.
Optical spectroscopy was born in 1802,when the Fraunhofer lines were discovered - dark lines in the sun's spectrum. These lines were rediscovered and described by Fraunhofer in 1814. In the 60s of the XIX century, Kirchhoff gave them an almost correct interpretation, believing that these are absorption lines due to the presence of various gases in the Sun's atmosphere, and that a certain line is associated with each gas.
Targeted scientific spectroscopy began in1853, when Anders Jonas Angström compared the emission lines of gases with various chemical elements. This is how a new method of obtaining information about the composition of substances was born - spectral analysis.
Optical spectroscopy has greatly influenceddevelopment of physics in general. Quantum mechanics was created and validated in large part through spectroscopic research. Quantum electrodynamics was developed on the basis of radiospectroscopy (radio spectroscopy). It is believed that its positions were confirmed experimentally after the Lamb shift was recorded.
The probe is tuned for two years, scanning the sky in near infrared light, performing a full survey every six months.
This light is not visible to us, humans, unarmedwith the eye, but it can allow the apparatus to peer and observe distant galaxies. Using the data obtained from the device, scientists aim to survey the entire sky, measuring the unique signatures of galaxies and stars, creating a unique map of the starry sky.
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory (LRD; eng.Jet Propulsion Laboratory or JPL) is a NASA research facility located near the cities of Pasadena and La Cañada Flintridge near Los Angeles in the United States. Operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), it builds and maintains robotic spacecraft for NASA.