NASA to launch Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex-4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base

Falcon 9 will launch @NASA’s SPHEREx mission – which will gather data on more than 300 million galaxies and investigate how the cosmos started – from our Vandenberg AFB launch site as early as June 2024.

NASA has chosen Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) from Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Cosmos, the Epoch of Reionization, and the Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission. SPHEREx is a proposed two-year astrophysical mission to survey the sky in near-infrared light, which, while not apparent to the human eye, acts as an important instrument for responding to the cosmic questions of the birth of the universe and the eventual formation of galaxies.

It would also look for water and organic molecules – necessities of life as we know it – in regions where stars are born from gas and dust, known as stellar nurseries, as well as disks around stars where new planets may be created. Astronomers will use the project to collect data on more than 300 million galaxies and more than 100 million stars in our own Milky Way galaxy.

The net cost to NASA to launch SPHEREx is about $98.8 million, including the launch service and all associated mission costs.

The SPHEREx mission is reportedly expected to launch a Falcon 9 rocket from the Space Launch Complex-4E at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California as early as June 2024.

The SpaceX launch facility will be operated by NASA’s Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The project, sponsored by the Astrophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the Agency’s headquarters in Washington, DC, is led by the Explorer Program at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. NASA’s Southern California Jet Propulsion Laboratory is responsible for overall project management, system architecture, integration, research and mission activities.