NASA has chosen SpaceX to give launch services for its upcoming two-year astrophysics mission said to kick off on June 2024.
The mission’s goal is to “survey the sky in the near-infrared light,” which could possibly give answers to how the universe came into existence and the development of galaxies.
NASA has chosen SpaceX to provide launch services for its upcoming two-year astrophysics mission slated to kick off in June of 2024.
The agency said in a Thursday release. The mission is dubbed Spherex, which stands for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer.
Its goal is to “survey the sky in the near-infrared light,” which could then help answer questions about the birth of the universe and the development of galaxies.
SPHEREx will also look for water and organic molecules in areas where stars are formed from gas and dust, “as well as disks around stars where new planets could be forming,” NASA says.
The mission will allow astronomers to collect data on more than 300 million galaxies, and more than 100 million stars in the Milky Way.
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The mission, which costs around $98.8 million to launch, will take off on a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex-4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
NASA Picks SpaceX To Launch $99M
SpaceX is looking to set a strong pace for launches in 2022 as its third Falcon 9 mission of the month is scheduled to blast off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Tuesday evening.
This will be the second Starlink mission of the year, with 49 of the company’s low-Earth-orbit flying broadband routers ready to be deployed about 15 minutes after blast-off.
Why did NASA select SpaceX?
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NASA’s source selection documents showed that Starship was both cheaper and more capable than the landers proposed by Blue Origin and Dynetics.
NASA picks Elon Musk’s SpaceX to help with a $99 million mission that will map the creation of the universe. NASA has picked Elon Musk’s SpaceX to help with an astrophysics mission dubbed SPHEREx. SPHEREx, a space telescope, is due to launch via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in 2024 for a two-year mission.
SpaceX
The Falcon Heavy is a powerful 27-engine rocket used for flying large commercial satellites and cargo to deep space.It is expected to launch for the first time in late 2016 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The company plans to fly an unmanned Dragon space craft to Mars as soon as 2018. SpaceX’s Dragon capsule became the first commercial space craft to deliver cargo to the International Space Station in 2012.
Now the company is working to develop a version that would be able to fly humans by 2017 and land using its engine thrust.
