NASA has announced that the SPHEREx space telescope, launched into space at the beginning of March 2025, has officially begun its scientific operations — an ambitious 25-month journey aimed at mapping the entire sky through infrared observations, uncovering the secrets of the universe’s origin, and searching for chemical clues that could indicate the existence of life beyond Earth.
SPHEREx, short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, was built with the goal of exploring some of the biggest questions in modern astrophysics: how the universe expanded shortly after the Big Bang, and what biological building blocks might exist on stars and in distant regions of our galaxy.
After a preparation period lasting over a month — which included precise calibration of the systems, operational tests, and initial synchronization with NASA’s control centers — the telescope began its first observations this past week. According to the plan, SPHEREx will complete approximately 14.5 orbits around Earth each day, capturing about 3,600 images daily in 102 different wavelengths in the infrared spectrum — a range of radiation invisible to the human eye but critical for studying the earliest cosmic processes and detecting organic molecules in space.
SPHEREx’s flight path was uniquely designed to allow it to map the entire sky dome within approximately half a year. It orbits the Earth in a polar path — moving from the North Pole to the South Pole — and each day photographs a narrow strip of the sky. As the Earth continues to orbit the sun, the telescope’s field of view changes accordingly, so that after six months, it completes a comprehensive scan of the entire universe from every direction. During its full operational period, SPHEREx will conduct four complete celestial scans.