Work begins on NASA’s SPHEREx (Specto-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) space telescope and once completed, it will stand nearly 8.5 feet tall (2.6 meters). Cone-shaped photon shields, which are being assembled in a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, give SPHEREx its distinctive shape.
Three nested cones surround SPHEREx’s telescope to protect it from the light as well as heat of the Sun and Earth.To complete two all-sky maps every year, the spacecraft will sweep over every section of the sky, similar to scanning the inside of a globe. A launch is planned for no later than April 2025 and the mission is set to measure the abundance of water ice in interstellar clouds of gas and dust, where new stars are born, to help scientists better understand where the key ingredients necessary for life originated.
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We’re not just concerned with how cold SPHEREx is, but also that its temperature stays the same. If the temperature varies, it could change the sensitivity of the detector, which could translate as a false signal,” said Konstantin Penanen, JPL’s Payload Manager for the mission.
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