NASA’s upcoming telescope launch aims to address some existential questions

Sometimes, space missions aim to answer the simple, quotidian questions we ask ourselves as we go about our lives:

“How did the universe begin?

“How did galaxies start to develop?”

“Well, how did I get here?”

This week’s planned launch of NASA’s SPHEREx telescope seeks to provide insights into some of these existential questions.

Three things to know:

• The new, 8.5-foot telescope is scheduled to be launched this Tuesday by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Its primary goal is to explore the origins of the universe.
• Beth Fabinsky, the deputy project manager for SPHEREx, explained in an interview with NPR’s Scott Detrow that this telescope has a unique capability as an, “All-sky survey, [with] a very wide field of view. We’re going to see the entire universe four times in our two-year mission. And that means we can draw really grand conclusions from a very large data set about the universe that we see.”
• Part of that SPHEREx’s mission, according to NPR’s Ari Daniel, is to bridge the gap among existing telescopes by detecting infrared light with wavelengths that are too long to be seen with the naked eye.

Listen to NPR’s Short Wave podcast for more discoveries, everyday mysteries and the science behind the headlines.

How does one explore the origins of the universe?

Simply put: The Big Bang led to an astronomical expansion in the size of our universe in a very brief period. This rapid cosmic growth has significantly influenced the formation of our universe.

But astronomers still don’t know what triggered that expansion, or why it occurred so extensively. The hope with SPHEREx is that scientists will be able to map out a clearer, broader picture of how our universe began.

Dive deeper with NPR:

• For a more in depth explanation of the SPHEREx launch, listen to NPR’s Ari Daniel report on the significance.
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