NASA’s SPHEREx mission aims to map 450 million galaxies and 100 million stars

A new extraordinary NASA mission aims to map the sky in unprecedented detail and color. 

Construction has started on SPHEREx, a new space-based observatory that will map over 450 million galaxies in addition to 100 million stars in our own galaxy, across 96 color bands in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Over its planned two-year lifetime, SPHEREx will map the entire sky, producing two maps a year, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).