NASA’s new telescope launch hopes to answer some existenial questions : NPR

Concept art for the SPHEREx Spectro-PhotometerNASA/JPL-Caltech

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NASA/JPL-Caltech

Sometimes, space missions aim to answer the simple, quotidian questions we ask ourselves as we go about our lives:

“How did the universe begin?

“How did galaxies start to develop?”

“Well, how did I get here?”

This week’s planned launch of NASA’s SPHEREx telescope seeks to provide insights into some of these existential questions.

Three things to know:

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How does one explore the origins of the universe?

Simply put: The Big Bang led to an astronomical expansion in the size of our universe in a very brief period. This rapid cosmic growth has significantly influenced the formation of our universe.

But astronomers still don’t know what triggered that expansion, or why it occurred so extensively. The hope with SPHEREx is that scientists will be able to map out a clearer, broader picture of how our universe began.

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