SpaceX Launches NASA's SPHEREx Telescope, PUNCH Solar Probes

A SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle launched SPHEREx and PUNCH from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, on 12 March at 0310 UTC. Falcon 9’s first stage (B1088) landed on Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4) at Vandenberg Space Force Base. SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) is NASA’s newest space telescope that “will observe hundreds of millions of galaxies and other objects during its two-year mission, mapping the cosmos in wavelengths invisible to the human eye”. PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) is a “constellation of four small satellites in a polar (Sun-synchronous) low Earth orbit that will make global, 3D observations of the entire inner heliosphere to learn how the Sun's corona becomes the solar wind”