The new NASA Observatory was launched into space on Tuesday with a mission that would help scientists unravel what happened in the first fraction one second after the Big Bang.
The Spherex mission (short for Universe History, Reionization Epoch, Ice Explorer’s Spectroscopic Optical Meter) is designed to map the entire sky, study millions of galaxies, and stitch together how the universe has formed and evolved.
According to NASA, it has been postponed several times since late February to help engineers evaluate the rocket and its components recently due to bad weather at launch sites.
The cone-shaped spacecraft ended Tuesday at approximately 8:10pm above the Space Sex Falcon 9 rocket from Van Denburg Space Force Base in California. Also, to get into orbit there were four suitcase-sized satellites deployed on another mission by NASA to study the sun.
The $488 million Spherex Observatory will investigate the entire sky four times over a two-year mission. Spacecraft instruments observe the universe in 102 different colors or wavelengths.
BAE System / NASA
Colors in the infrared range have longer wavelengths than what the eye sees, so they are essentially invisible to humans. However, in the universe, infrared light from stars, galaxies and other celestial bodies contains important information about composition, density, temperature and chemical composition.
A technique known as spectroscopy allows scientists to analyze infrared light and divide it into different colors, just like the way prisms divide sunlight into colorful rainbows. Therefore, data collected by the Spherex Observatory gives researchers insight into the chemistry and other properties of hundreds of millions of galaxies in the universe.
NASA said these observations would help scientists study how galaxies are formed, trace the origins of Milky Way waters, and connect what happened later. The Big Bang that Created the Universe Approximately 13.8 billion years ago.
Source: www.nbcnews.com
