The SPHEREx telescope, launching imminently, will create an unprecedented multi-coloured map of the entire sky by dividing light into 96 distinct spectral bands.
Unlike Webb and Hubble, which examine tiny portions of space in high detail, this compact but powerful instrument will survey the full sky every six months, cataloging over 450 million galaxies, 100 million stars and 10,000 asteroids.
The SPHEREx telescope is relatively small but will provide a humongous amount of knowledge in its short two-year mission. Whilst, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) cost $10 billion, the SPHEREx was made at a cost of 'just' $488 million and is an infrared telescope designed to take spectroscopic images - ones that measure individual wavelengths of light from a source. By doing this it will be able to tell us about the formation of the universe, the growth of all galaxies across cosmic history, and the location of water and life-forming molecules in our own galaxy.
In short, the mission will help us understand how the universe came to be, and why life exists inside it.
Everything in the universe, including you and the objects around you, emits light in many different colours. Our eyes split all that light into three bands - the brilliant greens of trees, blues of the sky and reds of a sunset - to synthesise a specific image.
But SPHEREx - short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer - will divide light from everything in the sky into 96 bands. This is a massive leap forward. It will cover the entire sky and offer new insights into the chemistry and physics of objects in the universe.
Want to know more? Here's a short explainer video...