NASA to launch SPHEREx space telescope in 2023 to find the origins of the universe

The US space agency has announced that it will launch a space telescope in 2023, that would go on a two-year mission to search for extra-terrestrial life and try to find out about the origin and evolution of the universe.

The telescope is named as "Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionisation and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx)" and is funded at $ 242 million. The telescope will survey the sky in optical as well as near-infrared spectrum of light.

Data would be gathered by astronomers, from more than 300 million galaxies across the cosmos and about 100 million stars in our own Milky way galaxy. It will provide a cosmic map containing the blueprints of the first moments in the universe. This would help us understand more deeply about one of the biggest unexplained riddles : how universe came into existence and how it expanded so quickly after the Big Bang in a fraction of seconds.

On one hand, SPHEREx will explore more than 300 million galaxies from near as well as far distances - some more than 10 billion light years away. While, on the other hand, it will also search for essential life ingredients like water in stellar nurseries in our Milky way - regions where stars are formed from dust and gases and protoplanetary disks, where new planets could be forming.

Every six months, SPHEREx will survey the sky using technologies adapted from earth satellites and Mars Spacecraft. The complete mission will create a map of the entire sky in 96 different colour bands - exceeding far from any previous sky-mapping survey.

It will also identify the target areas for future missions like the James Webb Space Telescope and Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope.