Context:

• NASA will launch a new space telescope in 2023 that could provide a glimpse of the first moments in the history of the universe and explore how common are the ingredients for life in our galaxy’s planetary systems.

SPHEREx:

• The US space agency said that Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission is a planned two-year mission funded at 242 million US Dollars.
• SPHEREx will survey the sky in optical as well as near-infrared light which, though not visible to the human eye, serves as a powerful tool for answering cosmic questions.
• NASA said, Astronomers, will use the mission to gather data on more than 300 million galaxies, as well as more than 100 million stars in our own Milky Way.
• SPHEREx will survey hundreds of millions of galaxies near and far, some so distant their light has taken 10 billion years to reach Earth.
• In the Milky Way, the mission will search for water and organic molecules in stellar nurseries, regions where stars are born from gas and dust, as well as disks around stars where new planets could be forming.
• Every six months, SPHEREx will survey the entire sky using technologies adapted from Earth satellites and Mars spacecraft. The mission will create a map of the entire sky in 96 different colour bands, far exceeding the colour resolution of previous all-sky maps.