NASA's SPHEREx & PUNCH Missions: Liftoff on SpaceX Falcon 9 at Vandenberg
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched NASA's SPHEREx and PUNCH Missions from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg in California on March 12, 2025, at 11:10pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). Falcon 9’s first stage landed on Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4) at Vandenberg. Falcon 9’s first stage (B1088) previously supported NROL-126 and Transporter-12.
The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) 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”. The Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) 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”.
Learn more about the SPHEREx Mission:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/punch/
Image Date: March 12, 2025
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