SPHEREx and PUNCH Launch

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Video imagery:

·       Photo, Falcon 9 rocket launches with SPHEREx and PUNCH: SpaceX

·       Photo, Falcon 9 rocket first stage booster lands after launching SPHEREx and PUNCH: NASA/Jim Ross

·       SPHEREx animation: NASA/JPL-Caltech/KSC/BAE Systems/AACS

·       PUNCH animation: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

·       Animation of solar wind and Earth: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

·       SPHEREx animation: NASA/JPL-Caltech/KSC/BAE Systems/AACS

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Resplendent images of the Planet Jupiter; the star-birthing nebula NGC 6 0 4; and the Planet Saturn are displayed.

 

Title: News From the Universe. March 21, 2025. SPHEREx and PUNCH Launch.

 

In the deepest night, the spacecraft launches.

 

Text: On March 11, NASA successfully launched the missions SPHEREx and PUNCH aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

 

The brilliant white light trailing from SPHEREx cuts through the sky in a vertical trajectory.

 

Text: Over its planned two-year mission, SPHEREx will study origins: the birth of the universe, as well as the water and organic molecules in our Milky Way galaxy that are essential to life as we know it.

 

SPHEREx will complete an all-sky spectral survey, producing a 3D map of the entire sky, in 102 different color bands, every six months.

 

A rectangular block of the color bands is projected into space.

 

Text: The PUNCH mission is made up of four satellites that will work together to study the Sun, and how its outer atmosphere becomes the solar wind.

 

The flow of material from the Sun creates space weather that can have a significant impact on astronauts in space and technology on Earth.

 

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The cone-shaped SPHEREx telescope navigates across the sky above the blue Planet Earth.

 

Text: Stay tuned for more news from both of these missions as they begin science operations.

 

This news was brought to you in part by the JET PROPULSION LABORATORY in Pasadena, California.