SpaceX launches two major NASA missions simultaneously: watch the highlights.
SpaceX and NASA successfully conducted the launch of two major orbital missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Tuesday night.
After a failed launch attempt due to weather conditions and a technical issue, NASA and SpaceX successfully launched two major missions—SPHEREx and PUNCH—from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. This event took place on Tuesday night and was made possible by the Falcon 9 rocket, known for its reliability in transporting payloads to space.
SPHEREx is a space telescope designed to map the cosmos, while PUNCH consists of four small satellites dedicated to studying the sun’s outer layer and solar wind. Both missions were broadcast live, including the recovery of the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, which landed minutes after placing the payloads into orbit. This launch marked the third time this particular first stage has been used, having previously launched the NROL-126 and Transporter-12 missions.
During its two-year mission, SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) will collect information on over 450 million galaxies and more than 100 million stars. The data obtained will allow scientists to better understand the evolution of the universe and also identify molecules of water and oxygen in deep space, which could be crucial for future space missions.
Olivier Dore, a scientist on the SPHEREx project at Caltech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, shared his excitement about the mission, noting that "the beauty of astronomy is that every time we look at the sky in a new way, we discover new phenomena," and emphasized that SPHEREx will provide a unique dataset for the discovery of new cosmic realities.
Meanwhile, the PUNCH satellites (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) will focus on observing the sun and its environment, with the aim of providing a clearer understanding of how solar winds affect our solar system. This mission will also contribute to improving solar weather forecasts, leading to safer and more efficient spacecraft launches in the future. Craig DeForest, the principal investigator for PUNCH, commented on the mission, stating that they hope to gain unprecedented insight into solar wind and the importance of tracking space storms in three dimensions as they approach Earth.
