SpaceX, NASA launch two missions to 'collect data' on galaxies, sun
NASA's new space telescope, the SPHEREx observatory, will map the sky on a two-year course over Earth's poles, while four small satellites in the PUNCH mission will study the sun.
"Falcon 9 lifts off from pad 4E in California!" SpaceX announced after the launch at 11:10 p.m. EDT.
The launch was scrubbed Monday "due to high winds at the launch site" and "an issue with one of the NASA spacecraft."
Tuesday's successful liftoff was the first time NASA and SpaceX have launched two missions at once.
"We call this a ride share and it's a new strategy that SMD is working, where we can maximize the efficiency of launches by flying two payloads at once," according to Mark Clampin, acting deputy associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. "So we maximize our science return."
After launching Tuesday, SPHEREx and PUNCH separated from the Falcon 9 rocket. As the second stage continued to carry both missions to orbit, the rocket's first stage made a controlled landing at Vandenberg Space Force Base's Landing Zone 4.
The SPHEREx spacecraft mission, at a cost of $488 million, will create a three-dimensional map over six months to two years to show more than 450 million galaxies "across cosmic time" in order to provide clues about how the universe expanded so rapidly.
"We won't see the Big Bang. But we will see the aftermath from it and learn about the beginning of the universe that way," according to the mission's chief scientist Jamie Bock at the California Institute of Technology.
"Deployment of NASA's SPHEREx Observatory complete," SpaceX announced less than an hour after launch, "beginning the telescope's two-year mission to collect data on more than 450 million galaxies and 100+ million stars in the Milky Way."
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