Spherex: Nasa's cutting-edge telescope searching for the origins of life

Nasa has taken another giant leap in the search for the origins of the universe – launching its newest space telescope on a mission to explore the building blocks of existence.

Spherex (the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) will survey hundreds of millions of galaxies and "their combined cosmic glow" to give scientists new "insights into the universe's evolution since the Big Bang", said The Independent.

The $488 million (£377 million) telescope will help us "answer fundamental questions", said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, Nasa's acting head of astrophysics. "How does the universe work? How did we get here within that universe, and are we alone?"

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How does Spherex work?

Spherex will spend two years orbiting Earth from a distance of 650km, collecting imagery of galaxies and stars. Its camera uses near-infrared wavelengths, and splits incoming light into 120 colours, rather like "a prism creating a rainbow from a sunray", said The Times. This technique, known as spectroscopy, will help scientists work out the "chemical footprint" of each object and its distance, "indicating when in the universe's history it was formed".

Spherex is built to survey large portions of sky, like a panoramic lens; when it picks up something of interest, the more targeted Webb or Hubble space telescopes can then zoom in greater detail.

This is "the first mission to look at the whole sky in so many colours," said Jamie Bock, Spherex's principal investigator. And "whenever astronomers look at the sky in a new way, we can expect discoveries."

What is Spherex looking for?

Mapping the universe in this way will also shed light on the physics of a cosmic phenomenon called "inflation" – or "what sparked the universe to increase in size by a trillion-trillionfold nearly instantaneously after the Big Bang", said CNN.

Spherex will also search for hidden reserves of water, carbon dioxide, and other molecules necessary for life, that are frozen within the clouds of gas and dust in which new planets and stars form. "Pinpointing these ingredients for life across our galaxy", and how common they are, "will help astronomers understand more about how they could be incorporated into newly forming planets". Astronomers are particularly keen "to look inside" these "molecular clouds" because they could contain newly formed stars and "discs of material, which form planets".

Is there anything else out there?

Packed alongside Spherex on its SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch was Punch, Nasa's $150 million (£116 million) Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere – a "constellation of four suitcase-sized satellites designed to study our Sun", said Space.com.

The four satellites will work together to take 3D images of the Sun's corona to discover the origins of solar wind, and track its journey across the solar system. Solar wind, and more intense energy bursts from the Sun, such as solar storms and flares, "influence the weather in space, causing radiation storms and impacting daily human life through power cuts and damage to communications satellites", said The Times.

It's hoped that data captured by Punch will help scientists more accurately predict these events. "Punch is going to revolutionise our physical understanding of space weather events and how they propagate through the inner heliosphere on the way to Earth," said Craig DeForest, Punch's principal investigator.