NASA reveals how its SPHEREx space telescope will search for clues to the Big Bang.
The mission has entered Phase C, which means that NASA has approved preliminary designs for the observatory and may begin the final design phase and manufacturing of hardware and software, NASA said in a blog post.
SPHEREx will have approximately the size of a subcompact car (about 1.2 tons) and use instruments that divide near-infrared light into its component colors. These data can reveal what stars and other bodies are made of while helping scientists estimate their distance from Earth. create a full-sky 3D spectroscopy map in near-infrared light.
The goal is to look for evidence of something called inflation that would have occurred less than one billionth of a second after the Big Bang. The evidence for this would be in how galaxies are positioned in the universe, and SPHEREx will help scientists 3D map them to each other. Then they can study those maps looking for patterns. which are potentially caused by inflation. At the same time, the instrument will help to discover how the first galaxies formed stars.
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The space telescope will also observe the stars in the galaxy itself for water ice and frozen organic molecules, the building blocks of life on Earth. attached to dust grains in gas clouds around galaxies. Stars form within these clouds, and then planets form from the excess material around them. “The ice in these discs could seed planets with water and other organic molecules,” wrote NASA. water in Earth’s oceans probably started out as interstellar ice. ”
Prior to Phase C, the SPHEREx team had to complete a preliminary design review and show NASA that they could actually build it. The team will spend 29 months finalizing the design and construction of components, before entering the next phase when they are assembled and tested. SPHEREx is scheduled to launch in a window between June 2024 and April 2025, if all goes according to plan. which, of course, is not a fact.
Ebgadged / TechConflict.Com