Two NASA missions called “SPHEREx” and “PUNCH” were supposed to share a ride to space this evening (March 10), but it wasn’t meant to be.
The agency had planned to launch both missions at the same time on Saturday (March 8) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, but SpaceX delayed the launch to complete vehicle checkouts. The next attempt, planned for tonight at 11:10 p.m. EDT (0310 March 11 GMT), was scrubbed due to poor weather and an undisclosed issue with one of the spacecraft.
A new launch date has not yet been announced. Liftoff will occur from Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
SPHEREx which stands for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer is a conical white spacecraft constructed to work as a sort of wide-angle version of the James Webb Space Telescope. It’ll be working with information-rich infrared light wavelengths emanating from the distant universe just like the JWST does, but it will do so on a much wider scale.
The JWST can peer into the crevices of a faraway galaxy with remarkable resolution, for instance, while SPHEREx will be able to detect the other galaxies around the JWST’s single target with its own stellar imaging capabilities.
Meanwhile, PUNCH which stands for Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere will be searching for secrets of solar dynamics. Made up of four satellites that’ll be stationed around our planet, this mission is meant to help scientists understand how the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, turns into the solar wind. This is important because the solar wind ricochets around the bubble our solar system sits within, known as the heliosphere; the edges of that bubble represent the barrier between our cosmic neighborhood and the rest of the universe.
Decoding how our sun operates in general can offer many benefits to humanity, but the most obvious probably has to do with space weather. Sometimes, for instance, bursts of plasma rip off the sun and turn into what are known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, that can barrel toward our planet. This happens relatively often, meaning a CME headed our direction doesn’t mean we’re in for doomsday, to be clear but space weather resulting from such events can indeed affect things like our power grid and the health of astronauts in space.
Source:https://www.space.com/space-exploration/missions/nasa-launching-its-spherex-and-punch-space-missions-on-feb-28-how-to-watch-live
