NASA's latest space telescope, designed to survey the entire sky in unprecedented detail, was successfully launched into orbit on Tuesday. The Spherex observatory, riding aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, began its mission to explore the origins of galaxies, trace the universe’s expansion, and search for essential ingredients of life within our own Milky Way.

The Spherex mission, valued at $488 million, will offer scientists a sweeping view of hundreds of millions of galaxies and their collective cosmic light — an effort to better understand how galaxies have formed and evolved since the beginning of time. Aimed at capturing the faint glow of the earliest galaxies formed after the Big Bang, Spherex’s unique approach focuses not on individual galaxies but on the overall light produced by all galaxies together.

“This cosmological glow captures all light emitted over cosmic history,” explained Jamie Bock, the mission's chief scientist from the California Institute of Technology. “It’s a very different way of looking at the universe,” Bock added, noting that this method may reveal sources of light previously undetected. Through this vast light survey, scientists hope to uncover critical insights about how the universe expanded so rapidly in its earliest moments.

Closer to home, within the Milky Way, Spherex will also search for water and other life-supporting molecules hidden within the icy clouds between stars — the regions where new solar systems are born.

SpaceX successfully launched the Spherex telescope from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base after a two-week delay caused by rocket and technical issues. Alongside Spherex, the rocket also carried four smaller, suitcase-sized satellites known as PUNCH, which will separately study the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, and the solar wind from a polar orbit.

Following its smooth deployment, Spherex detached from the rocket’s upper stage, drifting into space with Earth’s glowing blue curve as a backdrop. The telescope is now set on a path that will take it over Earth’s poles, circling the planet at an altitude of about 400 miles.

Weighing 1,110 pounds — roughly the size of a grand piano — the cone-shaped Spherex telescope is designed to scan the entire sky in infrared light. Over two years, it will complete four full-sky surveys, capturing a colorful and inclusive map of the cosmos. Unlike NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, which offer high-resolution images of individual galaxies, Spherex will take images of vast regions of space all at once, focusing on the total glow from billions of galaxies.

Bock explained that while Spherex will not directly observe the Big Bang itself, “We’ll see the aftermath from it and learn about the beginning of the universe that way.”

Equipped with infrared detectors capable of distinguishing 102 different colors — all invisible to the human eye — Spherex will produce the most comprehensive colour map of the universe ever made. Deputy project manager Beth Fabinsky of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory described the experience as “looking at the universe through a set of rainbow-coloured glasses.”

To protect these sensitive infrared detectors from heat and light, Spherex features a unique design- three nested aluminum-honeycomb cones that shield the telescope from the sun and Earth's warmth. The layered structure, resembling a large 10-foot-wide collar often seen on dogs recovering from surgery, helps maintain the extremely low temperatures required for infrared observation — a chilling minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 210 degrees Celsius).

With Spherex now in orbit, NASA embarks on an ambitious journey to create a full-colour, panoramic view of the cosmos, shedding light on the mysteries of galaxy formation, cosmic expansion, and the ingredients for life in distant star systems. By capturing the universe’s collective glow, Spherex promises to reveal a side of cosmic history that has never been fully seen before. Scientists around the world eagerly anticipate the discoveries that will emerge from this mission as humanity takes another bold step in understanding its place in the universe.