NASA's SPHEREx/PUNCH Live Launch Coverage

NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) observatory and PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) satellites, launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Tuesday, March 11, 2025. SPHEREx will use its telescope to provide an all-sky spectral survey, creating a 3D map of the entire sky to help scientists investigate the origins of our universe. PUNCH will study origins of the Sun’s outflow of material, or the solar wind, capturing continuous 3D images of the Sun’s corona and the solar wind’s journey into the solar system.

What is said in the film

We live in a time where we can actually answer questions about the universe that we see. When we look into the night sky. But there are still mysteries that remain to be solved. Sex and PUNCH are two completely different missions that are sharing a ride together to space. SPHEREx is a telescope that takes images of our skies in infrared.

We're going to take thousands of pictures forming a map of our universe. We're trying to look back in time to see what happened in the first second after the Big Bang. PUNCH is a constellation of four small satellites. It's focused on the sun's outer atmosphere, the solar corona, and how that solar atmosphere fills our solar system and bombards Earth's magnetic field. It's going to be the most complete all sky survey that we've ever done.

Being able to see basically back in time, it's cool. It's like time travel. We can expect some surprises in this process to gather spirits and PUNCH. Highlight NASA's mission to not only explore the cosmos, but to unravel the deeper connections that bind us on. Three.

Two, one and liftoff. Here's a live look at the Falcon nine rocket that's set to launch in just 53 minutes from Vandenberg Space Force Base. This one launch is carrying two missions SPHEREx, a space telescope that will map our cosmos and PUNCH for small satellites that will study the sun's outer layer. Hello, and welcome to Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. I'm NASA's rear Kelvin Weaver, bringing you live coverage from the heart of the spacecraft and launch vehicle operations on base.

Joining me today is Fara Allaby, SPHEREx Flight systems engineer. Thanks for being here. Farai. I'm so excited to be back with you today. Well it's great to have you.

NASA's Launch Services program, also known as LSP, is managing today's launch. And just a few feet away. Teams are hard at work preparing for t -0. NASA and SpaceX called off yesterday's Falcon nine launch of the sphere and PUNCH missions due to weather and a SPHEREx ground data issue. That's why this was an issue that was found yesterday early in the in the countdown.

It was a communication issue between the payload operations center that's based at JPL, and the ground stations that receive the data from the spacecraft once it's in orbit. The, team at JPL worked all night and all day to find the issue and fix it. And then now we're ready for launch, and, you know, bumps like that, bumps in the road like that. They happen. SpaceX.

It's just difficult. And I could not be more proud of the team that resolved all of these issues today. And of course, yesterday, we're also really worried about clouds. I learned so much in the past 48 hours about thick clouds and cloud induced, no, sorry, rocket induced lightning. I feel like an expert now in clouds.

I can say that you are. And I just want you to know that weather is looking good for tonight. So we are now heading towards a launch that is targeted for eight 10:12 p. m. Pacific Time.

And as you know, Goddard Space Flight Center oversees PUNCH while JPL manages for X. That's right. So spirit is really a partnership of many, many different institutions. We have contributions from Cal Tech, from systems that build the spacecraft. That's where we did the integration.

We have university partners, international partners. But the whole thing, the management oversight and the systems engineering oversight comes from JPL. And once we launch and we're operating it, the operations center is also at JPL. So far. We look forward to your insight tonight.

Thank you. And as we continue to monitor important launch milestones, remember there are plenty of ways you can participate in this broadcast. For one, if you have any questions about anything we're talking about today, send them away. That's right. Submit them online using the ask NASA hashtag, and we will try to answer as many of them as we can live.

So SPHEREx is journey to the launch pad. Took the space telescope across the western U. S. the observatory was assembled at Bay Systems in Boulder, Colorado. After assembly, it was driven across the Rockies all the way to Vandenberg Space Force Base.

PUNCH was built at the Southwest Research Institute headquarters in San Antonio, Texas. From there, it was shipped to Vandenberg for comprehensive testing on all four satellites. SPHEREx and PUNCH were then integrated with the launch carrier in a Falcon nine rocket. Now let's head over to Space Mission Control in Hawthorne, California, where our team of NASA and SpaceX commentators are standing by. Good evening everyone.

I'm Jesse Anderson, a senior production manager here at SpaceX. And joining me once again today are Megan Cruz and Nick Waltman from NASA. It's so great to have you both here today. Yeah. Thank you so much for having us again.

And I'm really feeling good about launch today. Yes, it's feeling real good tonight. Right behind us is our factory in Hawthorne, where we build our Falcon nine rockets and Dragon spacecraft. Countdown to launch began about seven hours ago, and right now we are targeting liftoff at 8:10 p. m.

Pacific time from Space Launch Complex 40 at Vandenberg Space Force Base. And I couldn't be more excited to say that right now we are green with weather. The three of us have been keeping an eye on weather all day because going into the launch countdown today, we were concerned about weather, but really, it's been trending so much better. Yeah, compared to last night, space force launch weather officer, Lieutenant Park, just finished up our weather brief for the launch team. We are looking at less than 10% for tonight.

T0, things are looking great. From from our thick cloud rule and the way weather is going. Of course, weather is one crucial point of the launching rockets. But, you know, you mentioned launchers, and that's where we come in. We act as a broker for the spacecraft customer, in this case, JPL, ensuring that, missions like spirits and PUNCH, they get the best possible ride to space.

We coordinate with our commercial partners, to make sure that everything is happening. Well. So today, we selected SpaceX, and we are looking for a great ride for spirits and PUNCH to put them in that sun synchronous orbit to Earth. Yeah. I'll talk a little bit more about that orbit during the broadcast.

But I do want to point out, you know, you're mentioning that LSP selects the best provider for each mission. LSP has selected SpaceX for 11 launches now. Yes. And we are so excited for another mission with you. All.

Over the last ten years, we've launched incredible NASA science missions that have gone to low-Earth orbit and beyond. Most recently, Scott Pace and Europa Clipper. SpaceX is super excited to help unlock new discoveries in astrophysics and heliophysics with X and PUNCH. And today is actually SpaceX's first rideshare mission with national NASA Launch Services. And our next one will be with the tracers mission, which is scheduled for later this year.

Hey guys, take a look at that live. Look at the launch pad right there. Not many clouds overhead. Looks amazing. Great looking great.

Looking great. Again, the three of us are going to keep an eye on that weather and commentate through the major milestones throughout today's launch. The next up, we're going to have the NASA Launch Manager poll to see if teams are going to start fueling the Falcon nine. Back to you. Riquelme para.

Thank you so much Megan and Jesse far. We have so much to look for tonight, including that weather. Absolutely. And we have lots of guests from both the specs and the PUNCH missions that are going to join us today so that we can ask them all sorts of questions. Exactly like engineers from the launch will show us how a special orbit helps Fedex and PUNCH by keeping their view of Earth and space consistent every day.

PUNCH principal investigator Craig DeForest will bring 3D replicas of ancient solar petroglyphs. We will be able to hold in our hands and sphere. Project scientist Olivia Doré will demonstrate how the space telescope maps the universe. And don't forget the main attraction the Falcon nine launch of SPHEREx at PUNCH. The launch window opens at 809 50 7 p.

m. Pacific Time, and stay tuned as we gear up for the launch of two missions. SPHEREx is loaded with high tech components to help it map our cosmos. So let's take a look at some of those specs right now. Sphere is about the size of a small car, and weighs a little less than a grand piano at about 1,100 pounds.

It will orbit Earth in a way that keeps the telescope pointed away from our planet and the sun. That helps with infrared observations and also keeps the parts inside cool spherical. Create a map of the entire sky, taking images in everyday action like scanning the inside of a globe. The all sky map will have 102 different color bands, each a different wavelength of light. This far exceeds the color resolution of previous all sky maps.

Spherical will observe over 450 million galaxies with its wide Field Telescope. This map will help scientists better understand what happened within the first fractions of a second after the Big Bang. It will also shed new light on how galaxies form and evolve, and where water and ice and other building blocks of life come from. And far we have people from all over the world watching today's launch and they are sending in some questions. So why don't we get to a few right now?

Let's do it. All right. Coming up. We have Universal Gibson on Instagram. Who wants to know how far away in time will we be able to observe?

So SPHEREx is creating a 3D map of the universe. That's going to help us understand what happened in the first, and wait for it trillionth of a trillionth of a billionth of a second after the Big Bang. So it's really the very beginning of our universe that we're going to be able to understand with, with the science of spirits is doing. Wow. And another question we have coming in, you know, Daniel Bert on Instagram wants to know, how can we see a 14.

8 billion year old photon from the universe's start? Well, so really what sphere is doing is it's taking the current structure of the universe. And actually you he's going to come and explain that to us later. But by studying the structure as it is right now, we can sort of hit rewind on it and understand what happened at the very beginning of the universe. But one of the things also is that we're taking images in infrared.

And so we'll hear from Phil later about how we have we passively cool our instruments so that we can be really sensitive to the those photons that are coming to us in, in our detectors. Oh, fantastic. Thank you so much for answering those questions. We will have more. Keep them coming.

Using the NASA hashtag. We have some PUNCH questions a little later on in the broadcast as well. Now it's time for another check in on the launch countdown with the team in Hawthorne, California. Yeah, great. Thanks for Cal.

We are just about a minute away from NASA, pulling its teams to make sure that we're ready to start loading propellants on Falcon nine. Yeah, and it's, the NASA launch manager, Doctor Denton Gibson. He's the one who's going to be leading the poll. Will soon hear his voice here. You know, again, whether we expected that to be a child.

About 20 minutes ago, we got that weather briefing. Who else are we going to hear reporting out to Doctor Gibson? Yeah. So, you know, and we'll be checking with the teams, from the NASA side to make sure that the rocket and the spacecraft, look good for launch, though he would check in with engineering, mission management, safety, mission assurance. The spacecraft of course, and our program to make sure that everybody's good to proceed into propellant loading on the Falcon nine.

So, we'll get ready for that poll here in about 20s. Then we'll hear, the NLM pull that team to make sure that we can get into propellant loading. Again, a beautiful shot of the launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base. Great sunset view. Might get a nice twilight, at launch tonight.

Yeah. And there you have it. At the top there, the payload fairings with our five spacecraft on top. We have SPHEREx, that's one spacecraft. And then PUNCH is comprised of four.

So five spacecraft inside the payload fairing. There. Again we're standing by for the NASA launch manager, Paul. Okay, I'm going to take it loudly as I can. A look at the clock.

42 minutes, eight seconds from liftoff. We come into the, launch spacecraft, and I looked back at the, link margin analysis, and we do have the, back up station. That's a good copy. And, backup station, which is what, flight ops is telling me. Yeah, it got me.

NASA's team. This is an alarm on an element, and I'm going to conduct the propellant load and launch readiness poll, starting with NASA's V NASA. Cisco. Some estimates go SMD. Now, some NASA members go.

LSP. LSP is go. Circling back to SMD. SMD is going an element. Copy that.

NASA team is ready for propellant load and launch. All right, so again, the NASA team is go to start propellant loading propellant. And so the Falcon nine this is the LP on countdown one performer eight launch status verification. And LM. Are you cleared to proceed with the launch order sequence?

NASA team is ready to proceed, LDA. It's the range ready to proceed. Range is ready, and you are clear to launch. All right, you are ready to launch. The range is green.

All great callouts. Again, with that live look of the pad we are targeting. It's easier to is complete and we propellant loading for non urgent conditions No-Go conditions produced a c or LD and they will approve abort in the order sequence for urgent issues affecting the safety of the operation and operator shall call hold hold hold on the countdown net launch control. Abort the launch order sequence immediately and proceed into the launch abort order sequence at T minus 10s. At launch, control will be hands off and relying on automated abort criteria for the remainder of the count.

All right, so, guys, you're going to notice that we're going to pause whenever we hear out those call outs on the net, just so that you can have some insight into what we're listening to. And so that you can also follow along with the latest launch updates. For now, let's send it back to recall. And as we continue with the, to the, loading propellant into the Falcon nine. Thank you so much.

Megan MC and Jesse Sphere is set to join NASA's fleet of space telescopes. It will complement the work of more targeted missions by providing a big picture view of the universe. Here to tell us more is Jamie Bock, the principal investigator. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jamie. Exciting to be here.

You know, sphere is designed to tackle some pretty big cosmic questions. What are some of the biggest mysteries scientists hope to answer? Well, with physics we're using a new capability. We're mapping the entire sky and 102 near-infrared colors. And with that new capability, that lets us address some really fundamental, exciting questions.

So the first one is where's the water? The Earth's oceans are thought to have originated from water in interstellar space in the form of ice. And so SPHEREx is going to map the abundance of water and other organic ices along millions of lines of sight over our galaxy in a way that's never been done before. You know, we're also going to measure the total glow produced by galaxies. And that glow traces all the light made by galaxies over cosmic time from their formation through their evolution.

And then finally, we're going to make a giant 3D map of distant galaxies using their positions and distances. And that map, those galaxies trace out structures set up by the Big Bang itself. And so we can use that map to learn more about how the universe began. Is that remind me of another question that we get all the time from viewers. What is the difference between space telescopes like James Webb and SPHEREx?

Well, so imagine you're at Everest Base Camp, and if you have a telephoto lens like a big telescope, like you can zoom in and see mountaineers on the very summit of the mountain. But if you have spherical, it's like the pano mode on your iPhone. And so with spherical you get a view of the whole Himalayan range. So those are very different and very complementary ways of looking at the universe. And Jamie, this is really your baby.

I mean, every time we make a technical decision we always ask ourselves, how do we get Jamie his science? We're here today. How are you feeling? It really is like having a kid. And so Eric's was baby at one point, but it's grown up and it's ready to walk out the door now and make a name for itself.

It's both, you know, intense, emotional and exciting all at the same time. Fantastic. And where will be where would you be watching launch today? Oh, I'm going to go outside and look at it in person as it takes off the pad. Totally waving goodbye one last time.

Thank you so much for joining us today. My pleasure. We really appreciate you taking the time. So let's head back to the team at Hawthorne. Thanks, Raquel.

Let's take a moment to meet today's vehicle, which is on the pad right there on your screen. Falcon nine is a two stage rocket, is the first, and currently the only orbital class rocket capable of reflate. Starting at the top of the vehicle is the payload fairing, a protective shell that encases the payloads being sent to the space today. Now made up of two halves, the fairing will separate from the vehicle once Falcon nine has climbed out of Earth's dense lower atmosphere, and today's fairing halves are brand new and will be flying for their first time, they'll be retrieved by a recovery vessel. Go beyond after launch.

Now continuing down the vehicle, we have the second stage. The second stage is powered by a single Merlin vacuum or back engine, which is optimized to perform in the vacuum of space. Below that is the first stage, which contains eight engines arranged around one center engine, all of which are held in place by a structure called the Octa Webb. Now, each of these nine Merlin 1D engines delivers about 190,000 pounds of thrust at sea level. The sequence started, which gives Falcon nine a combined 1.

7 million pounds of thrust during liftoff. The Falcon nine first stage is also equipped with four landing legs that deploy to allow for a vertical landing on a droneship or landing pad, and the booster supporting today's mission is flying for its third time tonight. Having previously supported NASA protocol 126 and transporter 12 after stage separation, the first stage will head back to Earth, this time targeting a landing at Landing Zone four at Vandenberg. And we should have, begun propellant loading that begins at the T -35 minute mark. So we're about 40s into propellant loading.

All right, Jesse, you know, you mentioned the booster coming back to landing zone four. That's only about 1400 feet from where the Falcon nine will launch from. Yeah, that is correct. Megan, being able to launch and land from locations so close to each other makes reusability significantly easier. And in order to do that, after stage separation, the booster has to flip immediately fires engines with a boost back burn to start heading the opposite direction.

And that is, and that it will initially be flying at 17,500mph to make it make its way back towards land. All right. So our opponent is now, loading into the Falcon nine's first stage. So we've locked in that t0 for today. Eight, ten, 12.

We will see you back here in a few minutes. When we begin loading propellant into the second stage. Over to you. Thank you so much. Riding along with SPHEREx is another mission called PUNCH.

It consists of four suitcases, satellites that weigh about 140 pounds each. They will focus on the sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, and how it generates the solar wind. The spacecraft will also track coronal mass ejections, which are large eruptions of solar material that can drive large space weather events near Earth. The four satellites will spread out around the Earth along the day, night line, which enables the constellation to remain in constant sunlight as it creates a continuous, complete view of the corona and solar wind. Three of the PUNCH satellites carry an identical wide field imager.

The fourth PUNCH satellite carries a compact coronagraph, which will study the sun's corona and surrounding star field. All four cameras will be synchronized in flight, so that the science team can combine their images into a 90 degree field of view. Now, PUNCH will help scientists understand how the sun's energy and particles travel through space and affect Earth. So let's take a closer look at how this is done. PUNCH is an acronym.

It stands for Polar Emitter to unify the Corona and Heliosphere. The corona is the outer atmosphere of the sun. It's the part that is no longer gravitationally bound to the sun, and it has so much energy that it flows outwards, filling our solar system and pushes against the interstellar medium, making a bubble. And that is the heliosphere. And this system of how the corona turns into the heliosphere is what PUNCH is trying to study.

So PUNCH is fundamentally four cameras that work together to make composite movies. We have a narrow field imager that views the space close to the sun. And then we have three separate wide field imagers, each of which has a large squarish field of view that looks way off to the side, up to 45 degrees away from the sun. That allows us to do something that no other mission has been able to do, which is routinely tracked coronal mass ejections, space storms all the way across the solar system as they approach the Earth. By better understanding these storms and better understanding how they propagate on their way to the Earth, we'll be able to inform our partners on how to better forecast these events in the future.

And that's really important for protecting our astronauts, our satellites, and our power grids. Once we launch and start producing images, you'll be able to look at PUNCH data directly and see the kind of science we're engaged in. You'll be able to see things that are present in the sky right now. You just you're not aware of them because they're washed out by the the brightness of the sky itself. We are poised to do tremendous science with PUNCH, because it provides this global context of what is happening in the corona and what is happening throughout the inner solar system, so that we can connect the details to the bigger picture.

You might say the PUNCH is the next chapter in the study of heliophysics, as we bring imaging and cross scale understanding out so that we can develop a coherent understanding of the entire system, starts at the corona and extends out to envelop the planets themselves. To learn more about the PUNCH mission, just scan the QR code on your screen or go to science dot nasa. gov slash mission slash PUNCH. And with us now is Peg Luce, deputy director of NASA's Heliophysics Division. Great to have you join us.

Oh, I'm so excited. Thank you. Yeah. Let's start with a PUNCH question. Why are you interested in imaging the solar wind and the outer corona in 3D?

So we are interested in seeing how the charged particles that come from the sun make their way all the way throughout the solar system, especially to Earth. As those particles come to Earth, they can cause aurora, which are beautiful, but they can harm astronauts in space. They can harm satellite electronics, and they can disrupt GPS signals. So by looking in 3D, we can better predict exactly how that space weather is going to reach the wherever we're looking at the Earth or Mars or wherever we are concerned about where people will be. So it's it's really helps us, improve our predictions.

So it's like the weather prediction that we do here on Earth before solar wind. Yes it is. So can you explain to us a little bit how PUNCH fits into the broader NASA portfolio? So PUNCH is going to be part of the heliophysics suite of fleet of satellites. Heliophysics is the study of the sun, the solar wind, and and how it affects the entire, heliosphere, the entire solar system.

So there are different satellites that look at the, the phenomena close to the sun and different ones that study how the effects on Earth are done. And PUNCH will be drawing that, bridging a gap that that we currently don't have in seeing how those, solar eruptions actually travel. We we can see them up close at the sun and we see what's happening once they're far away. But we haven't been able to track them the way PUNCH will be able to do. Oh very neat.

And you know, NASA is launching these two science missions at once. Can you explain how this is an efficient approach? So for one thing, heliophysics is a science that benefits from multiple spacecraft flying together. And so we've been flying multiple spacecraft on the same launch vehicle for a long time. As rockets have gotten more capable, we are more able to fly different missions together.

And so it it's tremendous. It gives us an ability to maximize the return on the investment in the launch vehicle, get more science into space for the same investment. And it's more complicated, but it's absolutely worth it. Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Enjoy the launch. Oh yes. Definitely. Now let's go beyond our home star and peer back in time. SPHEREx is going to investigate some of the biggest questions about the very beginning of our universe.

To do that, it will study light so distant it has taken 10 billion years to reach Earth. Here's more on what we hope to learn. SPHEREx is NASA's latest explorer mission in astrophysics. It's a small telescope, but it has this unique and powerful capability of doing spectroscopy everywhere. We are going to survey the entire celestial sphere and collect a data set that will help us answer three fundamental science questions.

It's going to tell us about the origin of the universe, the birth and formation history of galaxies, and the abundance of essential molecules such as water in the early stages of star and planet formation. The great thing about SPHEREx is we will capture the entire sky four times in over 100 different colors of near-infrared, and that's really never been done before. According to our current understanding of the universe, we think that in the very earliest times, and I'm talking here a fraction of a second up, much less than a nanosecond, the universe appeared to have gone through an accelerating expansion called inflation. And this is really a profound idea, and we're very interested to test it. And so one way to do this is to look at how matter is distributed over the universe.

We want to map hundreds of millions of galaxies in three dimensions. What spherical does, in addition to mapping out all these galaxies as we cover the whole sky. So we can measure these galaxies over the largest part of the range, we can see which is the entire sky, and we want to cover the full range of distances from today to as far back as we can see. Water molecules bounce around in interstellar space, and every once in a while they will impact a small dust grain. When a water molecule collides with one of these dust grains, it freezes on the surface.

It doesn't leave the surface, and these ice covered dust grains participate in the collapse to form regions where new planets are formed, sphere for the first time will allow us to directly measure not just the location of these key ingredients, but the abundances of these key ingredients. We expect to have spectra of of order half a billion galaxies, hundreds of millions stars. We will really see anything that is observable in near infrared. And that's a lot of things. And so we can expect some exciting and unusual discoveries that come from this.

Physics is a nice complement to future telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, with the fantastic spatial and spectral capabilities, and learn more about what's going on. Now far, what are you most excited about? I think it's going to be turning that instrument on, getting those first pictures, and really, it's going to be the twinkle in this scientist's eyes when they get that data and make those big discoveries fantastic. And for more sphere mission updates, check out the QR code on your screen or go to NASA. gov slash SPHEREx.

And joining us now is SPHEREx program scientist John with new Sky. Thank you so much for joining us today. It's a pleasure to be here where we are excited. Absolutely. We have heard about the benefits of today's ride share.

So what does it take for our teams to launch these two science missions together? Yeah, so we think about this very carefully when we're, you know, seeing whether missions are appropriate to be rideshares. You know, the first thing we think about is, are they do they need to go into the same orbit, into a similar orbit? Right. That's kind of criteria number one.

We also are looking at, you know, what's the timeline for the development of both of, the potential missions we need them to be ready at the same time, right. That they have, comparable mass and size requirements as well. And also technical details like, you know, is one, mission going to contaminate another mission is that things like that. And so in the case of SPHEREx and PUNCH, they both had all these compatible criteria, and, and were good, rideshare partners. And we got really excited to be able to deliver two science missions, you know, with one launch vehicle.

It's a great, efficient way to launch two science programs at once, for sure. And so astrophysics is it's a really large field with a lot of existential questions. Can you talk to us a little bit about which piece of the puzzle for X is going to be answering? Yeah, sure. So NASA astrophysics, really our portfolio was answering three fundamental themes, right?

One is, you know, what is the physics of the cosmos? What are our cosmic origins? And then a really profound question of, you know, are we alone? And it's really cool that SPHEREx is touching on all three of those themes and in some small way, so that that was the primary driver of this mission. And in addition to that, it's going to be delivering a legacy data set that astronomers are going to be using for literally the next decades to not only answer those questions, but also questions we haven't even thought of yet.

Yeah. That's fascinating. And what big takeaways will viewers at home potentially get from the discovery made by these missions? Yeah, so again, it's going after those three key themes really three profound questions. You know, how did we get here?

How have galaxies evolved over time. And what was the instance right after the Big bang. And I think that's really inspiring. It's inspiring to me and it's inspiring to the science team. And I think it's inspiring, you know, to all of our listeners at home as well.

John, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks. Go. SPHEREx SPHEREx NASA has set its sights on deep space exploration. But before that, we're returning to the moon.

Here's more with your Artemis moon minute. NASA's latest science missions will serve multiple purposes, not only providing insight on how the universe and galaxies formed, but also helping the agency's astronauts in their mission to explore the moon and beyond. Through the Artemis campaign, SPHEREx will scan the sky, creating a map of the Milky Way and hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies to search for water, carbon monoxide, and any new planets forming. Astronauts will need to know where they can find water on the moon and how much there is. SPHEREx is asking similar questions about water in our entire galaxy.

The data from SPHEREx will identify targets for more detailed study by future missions. Also launching with SPHEREx is PUNCH, consisting of four satellites that will continuously observe the solar wind like never before. The radiation of the solar wind threatens Earth's power grids and satellites. Also the Moon's surface and astronauts and their spacecraft in orbit. Data from PUNCH will help scientists improve space weather forecasting so that it's faster and more accurate.

That information can lead to more optimal launch windows, adjust spacecraft trajectory to minimize exposure to extreme solar weather events, and design adjustments for spacecraft to better withstand coronal mass ejections. That's a look at your Artemis moon minutes. Scan the QR code on your screen to learn more about the upcoming Artemis two launch and what's planned for our Moon to Mars program. And it's been a busy week on the moon for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services Initiative, or eclipse, where we've been delivering payloads to the lunar surface ahead of future Artemis missions. On March 2nd, Firefly's Blue Ghost Mission one successfully landed on the moon, carrying ten NASA's science and technology instruments.

They're the first commercial company to execute a successful soft landing on the moon. If our take a look at that beautiful video, there's a cool video. I think I've seen it ten times. And just last week, Intuitive Machines I am to mission achieved a historic feat the southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever. Although the I am too mission ended prematurely due to the lander's orientation, the data collected will provide invaluable insights into this challenging lunar region and far up.

How about we answer some more of those SPHEREx questions coming in? All right. We have one, actually, that talks about the launch window and the times that are being heard. Can you explain what 810 and 809 mean? Yes.

I think we've talked about this a lot. Right. So we are trying to target a particular orbit. And in order to do that, we need to launch at a specific time, and we have to launch between 809 57 and eight 1027. So it's that 32nd window in which we can launch.

So what we did is we looked at, okay, I the a few hours ago, we looked at okay, is there any collision risk. There weren't. And so what the team did is they decided to launch right in the middle of that window. That's really the optimal time to get right on that orbit. And that's why you're something you've heard us say that we're launching at eight, ten and 12 seconds.

Precisely. And that's going to be a launch time today. Fantastic. Anything. Thank you to Luke for that question on Instagram.

Luke C on Twitter. I'm on ECS, actually. And we also have Ravi on YouTube. Who wants to know how long will it take to map? So the prime mission for SPHEREx is two years.

And during that time we're going to take four full maps of the universe. And so that's really the amount of time that we want to spend. But there is no propellant, onboard the sphere. There's nothing that we're going to, you know, that's going to deplete over time. So we hope that the mission is going to last much longer than that.

Well, thank you so much, Farrah. Keep those questions coming using the hashtag. Hashtag ask NASA with Falcon nine second stage locks loading. About to begin. As you just heard.

Let's send it back to Megan MC and Jesse. Welcome back to SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, where Megan MC and I are just outside of Mission Control. And Jesse Space started fueling. It's first stage about 20 minutes ago. So how's it looking right now?

Yeah, we're a little bit over halfway done. Our P1 loading is already complete on the second stage, and we're just about about 80% complete on our P1 for stage one and about 60% complete of liquid oxygen loading on, stage one. And we are just about to start loading liquid oxygen on stage two at the T -16 minute mark, which we should hear. Call out for that in a few seconds. Again, to get a great view of the rocket on the pad, there.

And at the tip top, we told you that, that is the payload fairings. And inside are the spacecrafts, which are encapsulated inside those payload fairings last week. Yet as Jesse mentioned earlier, talking about the Falcon nine rocket, those are brand new payload fairings. And SpaceX will retrieve those with their recovery vessel. Go beyond, inside that payload fairing, we have SPHEREx, our primary mission, which is one spacecraft PUNCH, which is made up of four spacecraft.

So deployment tonight, we will see five spacecraft deploy, into a sun synchronous orbit. Now, we were saying that the propellants are P-1 or rocket grade kerosene and super cold liquid oxygen. You know why those fuels and how do they launch a rocket? Yeah. Megan.

So our B-1 is the fuel component. Liquid oxygen is our oxidizer, which we cooled down to make it as dense as possible. Increasing density enables us to load more of it into the vehicle. And with a fuel and an oxidizer, we still need an ignition source. So we use t tub or triathlon aluminum and triathlon boran, which combust when combined lighting our fuel and oxidizer to create that thrust.

It's a pretty efficient system that not only gets spare and PUNCH into space, but also allows the booster to fly back to Earth and land for another mission. Yeah, and sphere X is going to scan our entire universe to gather data on billions of stars and galaxies, and then PUNCH, we'll study our sun's corona to better forecast when space weather will affect us on Earth. And then again, you're with NASA's Launch Services program, which determined that both those missions could fly together on this one launch. Yeah, as we just heard in previous interview we did, we looked at those, mission requirements. We assessed the missions, found that both could be delivered to that sun synchronous polar orbit that we want to get to this evening.

The two missions sharing a ride on one rocket are very efficient. And it also gives us, the most availability for our launch opportunities, throughout the time period of science. So, again, looking at both of these, rideshares our first one for LSP, we're excited for launch tonight. Yeah, again headed to what's called a sun synchronous polar orbit. And why does that work for both missions?

Well, check out my interview with LSP engine. Here's Phillip Hargrove and Mark Cannon's. Okay, Mark Phillip told me to wear yellow today. Why? Right.

So we're going to do a little demo. So you're the sun. That's why you're wearing yellow and I'm the earth. That's why I'm wearing blue. And green.

And this hula hoop is going to represent the orbit or the path that the satellites are going to take around the Earth. So we have to pay attention to a lot of things. One of them is the orientation relative to the earth. So that's this inclination. And then also the orientation relative to the sun.

So as the Earth moves around the sun throughout the year, it's possible that we could be facing away from the sun. We could be facing towards the sun. And for this mission, we want to be facing towards the sun the entire time. So we choose a sun synchronous orbit so that the twists of the orbit throughout the year is aligned with the Earth's rotation around the sun. So no matter where or when, we're always going to be in this orientation.

Gotcha. So I should always see every part of this orbit. Why is that important for the Sphere and PUNCH mission for SPHEREx, you can't look at the spacecraft without seeing this large cone on top. And that's because this is a photon shield designed to protect the sensitive instrumentation inside. And what is sensitive to is to the sun.

So with the sun always in this direction, that means we know the sun is never on this side. So that's the safe side. So that's when sphere acts can go ahead and operate in the orbit in this direction. Do their celestial sky observations always working on this backside of the orbit. The same side PUNCH on the other hand, is the exact opposite.

It wants to study the sun. It wants to see the solar wind, the solar weather emanating from the sun coming to Earth. So this is a perfect order for them as they go around, because they'll go ahead and get maximum viewing time of the sun. You know, we've been talking about in the broadcast how PUNCH is actually made up of four satellites. Sphere is one.

So basically you have five spacecraft that are relatively, you know, near each other as it's going around the Earth. How do you make sure that they don't interfere with one another? Right. Sure. You do a couple things because you're right.

That is very important. First thing is sphere is going to go ahead and separate pointing away from the sun. Obviously they're going to separate in this direction after sphere separates, the Falcon is going to do a small altitude lowering maneuver with their attitude control thrusters just to lower by a couple kilometers. So they're not exactly the same orbit. And then the PUNCH spacecraft are going to separate in different directions.

So the first two PUNCH spacecraft are going to separate equal opposite along the velocity vector. The other two can't at all set off that vector. So that puts them all in different directions. Even sphere arcs in different directions, keeping them all safely moving apart from one another, because SPHEREx doesn't want to be affected by the sun, can't be affected by the sun where there are special considerations on the ascent up. Yeah, absolutely.

Again, it's all about protecting protecting the spacecraft and keeping the sun out of this top half. So what we're going to do is normally we launch out of Vandenberg directly into the orbit plane, but instead we're going to launch east of the orbit plane we want to be in. That puts us on the dark side or in the shadow during those early phases of the mission. So as we then come out of shadow, will coast down to the South Pole, we'll circular orbit and a second burn and also do a plane change. To put us in that sense, you're going to orbit plane we want to be in.

So that keeps it safe for the spacecraft. Guys, I know a lot of work and time went into, you know, all these considerations that you just walked us through. I just really appreciate you guys taking the time to explain it so easily to us. Thank you so much. You got it.

Thank you. Thanks, Megan. That was a great explanation of the orbit both missions will use. And if you're just joining us, we are approaching ten minutes until liftoff. For the moment is finally here.

Oh, my God, my heart is beating so fast and so excited. So I know we are going to talk to you more about that in a minute. But we've also been taking your live questions tonight. So let's get to a few more okay. Let's do it okay.

Just distracted me. Yeah. We have one from Stardom Observatory on YouTube who asks, how long do you think it will take before we get the first images from SPHEREx? So today we'll be separating from from the launch vehicle will actually get the first bits of data hopefully very soon after separation. Definitely this the team is going to be working through the night and then we go through a commissioning period.

So we'll take a few days to make sure everything is good. Then we'll power on the instrument. So it's going to take a little while, but we hope that that commissioning period will take about a month to six weeks. And then after that will be moving it to the, the real science. But even during that commissioning period, we'll be getting some images too.

That will be great to see those first images comments. So keep those questions coming. Using the hashtag ask NASA and Fara Lodge is just minutes away now, so tell us how much this moment means for you and your team. You know, I've been on this mission for about three years now. I saw this spacecraft grow from, you know, a paper designed to being built and tested.

We shipped it then from van from, Via Systems in Boulder, Colorado, over to here. And now we've spent about two months here processing. We're getting ready for launch. It's really, really a big moment. And, you know, the team has gone through such difficult times with the fires recently in LA Covid, right, when we were designing the spacecraft.

So I know everyone is extremely proud and really excited to be here today. And where were your team by watching tonight. So we have a lot of our team members in this building here. Advancing space for space, looking at the data, participating those poles. We have people at the Space-X building.

And we also have part of the team at JPL at the Mission Operations Center, because once we launch, they will be the ones taking over our operations, and they'll be working there through the night, taking care of the spacecraft. All right. Well, far we are now under nine minutes until liftoff of SPHEREx and PUNCH on a Falcon nine rocket here at Vandenberg Space Force Base. Now, let's head over to Space Mission Control in Hawthorne, California, where our team of NASA and SpaceX commentators will count us down to liftoff. Thanks for Cal.

If you're just joining us, I'm Jesse Anderson, a senior production manager here at SpaceX. And joining me are Megan Cruz and Nick Waltman from NASA. Thanks, Jesse. Yeah, the three of us have been commentating through the launch countdown, and we're going to continue to do that for about an hour after liftoff to show teams deploying the SPHEREx and PUNCH spacecrafts into space, SpaceX started fueling the Falcon nine at about T -35 minutes. And things are looking really good as we load propellants.

We should hear a call out here soon as we get ready for engine chill at about T -seven minutes. Engine chill is where we flow a small amount of that liquid oxygen into the engine to prepare for full flow, as at the cryogenic temperatures that the Merlin engines will see exactly. And after that stage one will wrap up our P1 loading around the T -six minute mark, then stage when liquid oxygen loading will wrap up at T -three minutes and stage two at T -two minutes before launch. And we are coming up on that T -seven minute mark. That make up mentioned.

Stage one engine chill coming up here in a couple seconds. Perfect timing. There's that call up for engine show. All right. So the SPHEREx spacecraft will collect a treasure trove of new information about hundreds of millions of celestial objects.

And then you have PUNCH made up of four satellites that will study the sun and how to create space weather that can significantly impact us on Earth. Yeah, all five spacecraft are packed inside that payload fairing that you see. Top of the Falcon nine rocket. LSP is keeping a close eye on those spacecraft with the system on your end, and they will be transitioning to spacecraft internal power as we completed about T minus five, stage one RB one load is complete. All right, there's a call out for stage one.

Our one load complete. We still have, a little more loading left to go. They have to finish loading liquid oxygen into both stages. And, there's about another four minutes left of that. But again, you know what?

We're not dropping spacecraft is on internal power and configure for launch. Well, that's a good call out there too. That's Denton Gibson, doctor. Denton Gibson again, NASA's launch manager, confirming that the spacecraft are on internal power. Can you talk to us a little bit about that mix?

Yeah. SPHEREx and PUNCH on and battery power getting ready for launch tonight. I'm sure Farrah is sitting at the desk just excited for this milestone. As the spacecraft are now getting ready for launch later this evening. And so flying both SPHEREx and PUNCH on one rocket, I mean, it just saves money.

It's a great opportunity. It's it's very efficient to be able to take advantage of one rocket and the multiple launch opportunities we can get and get two spacecraft with same science into the same orbit. Yeah. And excuse some of those loud sounds. We are actually in the factory here in Hawthorne.

So you may hear, some work happening behind us. And coming up, a couple things are going to be happening. Back to back. We have the transporter erector, which is also known as the T or the strong back. It will start retracting away from the vehicle and that's that large Falcon nine.

Things are pressurizing for strong back. Retract. Good call out there. We're pressurizing in preparation for that. Strong pack.

Strong back retraction again. That's that transporter erector that structure there on your screen right next to the vehicle. It provides propellants and electricity to the rocket until just before launch. And we will first begin to see the clamp arms, which are just below the fairing, begin to open up. Once those clamp arms are fully open, then the T can retract away from the vehicle.

Come back. Retract has started. There's that call out that it has now begun. And so we will see those clamp arms begin to open there on your screen. It'll be very slow and slight, but once again, once they are fully open, then they can recline just about a couple degrees away from the vehicle.

And there you can see those clamp arms moving. At them this is Eld on countdown. It this is an alarm. You know them providing access to the Falcon nine is healthy or tracking no issues. Head into launch.

Can provide a final verification status for your team. NASA's go for launch. Great. Thank you. Quick poll there.

Sounds like we are go for launch. And you can see that transport director moving away from the vehicle. It'll be just two degrees and then we can start pressurizing the vehicles. Coming up here shortly. But propellant is still loading on the vehicles.

We're coming up on T -three minutes. We're liquid oxygen loading on stage one will complete here shortly. Yeah. Jesse, as we said earlier, this is the third flight of this booster for the Falcon nine rocket. Those brand new payload fairings that will be retrieved by go beyond, downrange inside those fairings, as we just heard from the NLM, everything is go.

The spacecraft are on internal power. Both fire and PUNCH are healthy and we are ready to proceed to launch tonight. Stage one LOX load is complete. All right. And all that's left now is to finish loading liquid oxygen into the second stage.

Again, we're targeting exactly eight, ten, 12 seconds for liftoff here from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Again, a beautiful wide shot right there of the launch pad will stay with you until we deploy both SPHEREx and PUNCH in a sun synchronous orbit around Earth. Two really cool missions against SPHEREx will deploy, first starting at about 40 minutes after launch. And then PUNCHes for spacecraft will deploy about ten minutes after that in two batches. Now, as always, we're hoping for some great live views of all those deployments.

Next call out. We're expecting again in less than 10s that stage two LOX loading is complete. Stage two LOX load is complete and there's that callout. Stage two liquid oxygen loading. Liquid oxygen loading is now complete, which means that propellant loading is now complete on Falcon nine.

That means 1 million pounds of kerosene fuel and liquid oxygen are loaded onto vehicles, and gas close ups are in work now, and you can see some of those white clouds on your screen. That is us venting out the liquid oxygen lines from the transporter erector. And when that coal old, gas meets that warmer ambient air, it turns into condensation, almost like what you see when, you get condensation on a cold glass of water. And we're coming up on to -one minute, where the internal flight computers will take over the launch countdown. Falcon nine is in start up, and there we heard it.

Start ups. So next up will be the go from launch. Director for space. This means that Falcon nine will be ready for liftoff. So let's, get ready to hear the go from space launch director for launch tonight.

Lee is go for launch. And there we hear the LD is go for launch, targeting a t0 at 810, 12. T-minus 30s. This range is go and weather is go. T-minus 15 seconds.

Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six.

Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

Engine. Go, go! Spirit! Go! PUNCH, SPHEREx and PUNCH on their way to the universe like never before.

And revolutionize space weather forecasting. We are t plus 30s into flight, and we are currently firing all nine of those m 1d engines. And after about 50s will begin throttling down those engines, which slows the vehicle down just slightly in order to kind of a treat nominal order to prepare for passing through Max-Q. And that is maximum aerodynamic pressure. That's the largest structural load that the vehicle will see during a sense of slowing the vehicle down.

Vehicle supersonic slowing the vehicle down will reduce some of the loads that it experiences through Max-Q. It's coming up here in a few seconds. Max-Q right on time. And now we have a few events that are coming up in quick succession, so we want to lay them out for you really quick. It's going to start with main engine cutoff.

That's Meco. And that's when SpaceX shuts down all of its nine engines on its first stage, which we are getting a great view down pipe right there. Shortly after that, stage one and two will separate from each other, and then seconds later, the first stage will flip back towards Earth, while the second stage will continue on igniting its M vac engine. Now that call out is second engine start one or SC one and this burn will last about six minutes. After that, the boost back burn on the first stage to put it back on a trajectory towards landing zone four, which again is back here are at Vandenberg, just about 1400 feet from where Falcon launched from in the first place.

Wow, look at that shot. All Merlin engines firing right there. And we have such a great live shot of it. Main engine cut off. Stage separation.

Confirmed. And back ignition. Stage one. Boost. Back start up.

Coming up next, we will see. Fairing deploy. And that's when the two fairing halves will separate and expose SPHEREx and PUNCH to the atmosphere of space. SpaceX will attempt, they will actually retrieve those fairings, back downrange on go beyond once they get back to Earth. That's.

Fairing separation confirmed. There. We hear fairing deployment confirmed. And we are. But you see on the screen is the fairing separating and.

Oh, showing sir Erickson PUNCH in on their way to space. Stage one. Booster back shut down. And there you see on your screen and heard that call out that the boost back burn is concluding on the first stage. Vehicle that's the first of three burns that it needs to make its way back down to earth.

This is the third flight for today's first stage, which previously supported two other launches NRoL 126, in November of 2024 and transferred 12 just in January of this year. And you may have noticed some soot on the vehicle prior to launch. During the entry burn, which is coming up here, in a couple minutes. Falcon nine is decelerating by reigniting three of the nine Merlin and 1D engines. Now, this causes the vehicle to fly through Merlin's exhaust gases, or the plume, which deposits a layer of sit on the vehicle's surface.

And that's it comes from the carbon based fuel that Falcon nine uses. With each flight, the suit builds up just a little bit more on the outside of the vehicle, giving Falcon nine its distinctive reused like we're just so lucky to have these great views again, we have a split screen here. On the left side is, the first stage, and you see those grid fins there guiding that first stage back to a trajectory here at Vandenberg Space Force Base. And then on the left hand, the right hand side on your screen, you have the second stage and you see that M vac engine is still burning. There.

You know, MC LSP just works really closely with SpaceX to be able to reach out to fly reused rockets for NASA missions. Yeah. Megan, at LSP, we look at all the requirements for all the missions that we have. And as I said earlier, we selected SpaceX for this Ferrix and PUNCH mission. And looking at all those requirements, we ensure that even previously flown launch vehicles will meet those requirements, providing NASA with a dependable and a cost effective ride to space for this, our first rideshare mission.

Now, if you're just joining us, hello, who are in your bottom corner right there? I'm NASA's Megan Cruz, and with me is Mike Waltman with NASA and also Jesse Anderson, a senior production manager at SpaceX. Now, Mike is with NASA's Launch Services program, which is managing today's launch. So he's going to have a lot of interesting things to say to us, to walk us through what we're seeing today. And of course, we have Jesse from SpaceX.

Really great ride so far. We're so lucky to have you guys. And, you know, LSP chose SpaceX to deliver SPHEREx and PUNCH to what's called a sun synchronous orbit 650km above the Earth. And SPHEREx is going to help answer some of the biggest astrophysical questions out there. You know, like, how do galaxies form and evolve?

How water and other key ingredients for life came to be. And then PUNCH is made up of four satellites that will study the sun and see how it creates space weather that can significantly impact us on Earth. I mean, we're talking about like, we're talking about, issues of GPS or satellites, things like that. Yeah, it's table one entry burn startup. And there we heard the call for the first stage, entry burn startup looking for entry shut down here in just a few seconds and getting ready for landing.

Burn in just about a minute. Just so. Stage one entry burn shut down. And there we have Jesse confirmed engine shut down for the entry burn. But back to what you were saying, Megan, about the science of the mission I know far is sitting there looking.

We are so happy that we got liftoff tonight. But, you know, the most important thing about these two missions is exactly what you were talking about. Once we get them deployed, the science that they will have, to be able to help us here on earth with some of the things you want, the spectral map of the universe will be incredible. And that solar, wind and solar has saved, flight termination system has been safe and sounds like stage one is on its way back. So that science is very important to us here on Earth.

So we're looking forward to getting these deployed this evening to have the landing burn coming up here in a few seconds. That will be a single engine burn and the last burn that the vehicle needs to land. Stage one landing burn. There's that call out. Landing burn has begun.

Let's watch as Falcon nine touches down. On landing zone 40. Stage one landing light. Deploy. Oh, and such an awesome view of Falcon nine.

Touching down on landing. Confirmed on landing zone 40. Confirming the third landing for this booster. I had applause here on the factory room floor. It's a fun place to see.

You know, it would have been cool to see it at Vandenberg, but this was pretty cool too. I was going to say I love the launches, but you know what? I love the way SpaceX makes landing look easy to test. It's still one of my favorite parts. As many times as we've seen it.

And right there, I mean, we lost the signal for a second, but, basically we're we're keeping an eye on the second stage as first burn that's continuing. And that burn is going to last, until just after t plus eight minutes, and then it will shut down. There will be a coast phase, and then we will relight a second time. All right. So again, first burn out of the way.

We will see a second burn later. That's going to happen around T plus 39 minutes. We hope that you stay with us to see the deployment of both SPHEREx and PUNCH. But for now, we're going to send it back to Raquel, because I know fire is probably cheering. Absolutely.

You are correct. Yes, absolutely. If you're just joining us, I'm NASA's re Calvin Weaver joined by far. I'll be bringing you live launch coverage from Vandenberg Space Force Base along the Central Coast of California. And just over nine minutes ago at 8:10 p.

m. Pacific time, we watched as a SpaceX Falcon nine rocket lifted off. And for. I think that is the happiest you've ever been. And I've known you for years.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm so happy that we're finally in space and of course, we still have to get through separation. But oh my gosh, being in this building, everything was shaking. But Mike will be jealous because really, that sonic boom as it was landing, it caught me by surprise. It's very loud.

Shook the entire building we were in right now. How does it feel now to have it off the ground? We still have, you know, a good 30 minutes to go before we, we separate. So we still have to hold on for that. But it feels really great to have space in space.

We saw a peak at the, at the foot on shields when the fairing separated, and I saw she was only one piece. So we're good to go. Fantastic. You know, the rocket is flying to important mission state one is your spirit, a space telescope that will create the most colorful 3D map of the cosmos ever. And PUNCH for small satellites that will study how the sun's outer atmosphere turns into the solar wind that fills our solar system.

So I have a little pop quiz for you, Farrah, do you know what each of those missions stand for? You know, let's start with yours. SPHEREx is the spectrophotometer for the history of the universe, epoch of reionization and ices. So oh my gosh, ice has explorer got it. Yes, it was close.

You got it. And you know how about fudge. It's been there. Polar. Remember the unified the corona and the heliosphere.

That one's easy. Great. That was an A+ for you. There. Before its journey in space, Ferrix had to go comprehensive testing.

Fire was there for the whole process and will give us a behind the scenes look. This is a clean room where SPHEREx is being built and tested. We call SPHEREx our small but mighty mission because it has some really ambitious science goals. The first is that we're trying to look back in time to see what happened in the first second after the Big Bang. We also want to understand how galaxies have evolved throughout our history.

And finally, we're looking for water and other basic ingredients for life in the places where stars and planets are forming. These systems partner with JPL in the design and development of SPHEREx. X systems was responsible for the integration and test of the spacecraft bus, which is everything below this metal ring you see around the center of the observatory. In addition, systems built the telescope that's at the center of the SPHEREx. X Observatory.

This Phoenix observatory is really two pieces. There's the bottom part that we call the spacecraft. And that's really the guts of the whole things. It has the computer, the teleconference stem, the control system, the solidly on the back side. And then the top part is the payload.

The pivot consists of the telescope itself, the thing that takes the images, the telescope is at the heart of how spherical observe the entire night sky. And then these cards are sent out shields that help us keep the telescope cool. The SPHEREx telescope and the detectors are required to be very temperature stable during their observations in order to collect that science data, and they lend this very distinctive structure to a spacecraft, one that I haven't seen before in my career. So a spacecraft is built in the clean room, but we can't do all of our testing in there. We actually have different facilities that help us mimic the different environments that the spacecraft is going to see in space.

The first facility that we get to when we come out of our clean room is the thermal vacuum chamber. Here at V, it's called Titan. It's a special chamber where we can walk in the spacecraft, pull out the atmosphere, and mimic the vacuum of space. It also can mimic the hot and the cold air space. So as you can imagine, when SPHEREx is on orbit around Earth, it's going to see the sun, but also eclipses.

So it gets really hot and really cold. And we can mimic all of that in that special chamber down the hall over there, beyond the curtain are three more facilities. The first is the Fiesta area. That's where we do our acoustic testing. It's a whole big party for the spacecraft.

We surround the spacecraft with these giant speaker stacks and we blast sound at it. The same sound that is going to see when it launches into space. Behind it is the vibration lab. That's a special table where we dig down the spacecraft and shake it, and all sorts of different directions, mimicking the shaking that it's going to go through when it's launching on that rocket. And then there's the electromagnetic interference and compatibility tests.

It's a really quiet room that absorbs all the sound. And we put the spacecraft in there and make sure that all of its components, they all emit radio frequencies. We'll make sure that they can all live in the same environment, and they don't interact with each other in a weird way. There's one last test that happens here in the clean room, and it's called the separation shock test. What we do there is that we take the spacecraft and we mount it to the payload adapter ring.

We then lift up the whole stack and mimic the separation that happens between the rocket and the spacecraft. When that happens, there's a big shock event. So we want to make sure that the spacecraft survives that, and also that all the pieces fit together. Years of hard work really paying off tonight. And this moment is so meaningful for the spherical team.

And the institution of JPL. This year began with devastating wildfires across the Los Angeles area, including the Eaton Fire that burned dangerously close to JPL. And far hundreds of employees were impacted. Yes, including members of our very own senior team. Some were forced to evacuate and unfortunately, others lost their homes.

And it all happened right as we were preparing to ship the SPHEREx Observatory from Boulder, Colorado, to Vandenberg Space Force Base, many of us were right in the middle of final shipment preparations when evacuation orders started rolling in. We even had to change our transport route to avoid fires, heavy smoke and road closures something none of us had ever expected to have to plan for. And throughout the firefighting effort, JPL provided water resources and a helicopter landing area for firefighters, first responders, and our community went above and beyond helping those in need and working tirelessly to protect JPL and nearby homes, and we would like to thank them for their courage, dedication and support. Yeah, I think this is exactly the time when our community really shines and we're so thankful for them. Absolutely.

You know, and someone else we'd like to thank today is the director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lori Leishman, and she joins us now. Lori, it is so great to have you here. Go spirit. It's so exciting. And thank you for that wonderful opening about our first responders and our whole brave community.

It's it's really special. Absolutely. And Lori, this launch is a true bright spot for JPL's family. How are you feeling after watching that launch? You know what?

It's just it's such the culmination of the hard work of so many people over many, many years. And even up towards the end, we have had quite a launch campaign here with lots of stops and starts. And when you're outside and are able to see that rocket go up and this one flew right through Orion's belt. Oh, gorgeous. It just makes it all worth it.

Hey, you could feel the rumble here too. Oh my gosh. And you know, spirit is a great example of a smaller, more focused mission with incredibly ambitious goals. How do missions like these fit into the bigger picture of what JPL does? Well, at JPL, we're really all about cutting edge science, no matter what size of the spacecraft it is.

Right? We want to do we do big science with big missions like Europa Clipper and the perseverance rover. But, and Spirit's is an example of doing really big science in a somewhat smaller mission. And so it's just great to see when there's the right kind of science question. We build the mission to answer it.

And Specs is also a collaboration between multiple partners. Can you explain to us how that led to the mission success, and maybe how that might influence future collaborations? Absolutely. I always say, you know, cosmic teamwork makes the dream work. Yeah, right.

So so collaboration is key to everything we do, whether it's with universities across the country and around the world, like we've done on SPHEREx, we have international partner Korea, involved in the SPHEREx mission and of course our industry partner at VA systems and, and the Pi at Caltech. So it really is taking the best from lots of different organizations. And that's why our motto is dare mighty things together, because everything we do is about the team. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Lori. We appreciate you having you here with us.

You know, launch is really just the beginning for the SPHEREx team. Right now. Mission control is kicking into high gear at JPL for a sneak peek at what's happening behind the scenes. I caught up with the project manager and flight director for SPHEREx. Can you describe why this space is so critical to the mission?

Well, this room, the Earth orbiting Mission Operations Center, will be the nerve center for operating SPHEREx. All of the telemetry that comes from the space vehicle will arrive here. And all of the commands that we send to the space vehicle will originate here on launch day. I'm up at Vandenberg Space Force Base and part of the countdown, and the launch management team, one of the key roles in this room, we call the, mission operations manager. That's one of the people that I will pull during the countdown.

Another key person is my deputy, the deputy project manager. Since I will be at Vandenberg, when all the action is going on down here, she will, function as the project manager in this room. Another one of the key people is version Gordon. And he'll be sitting at the other end of this room. Okay.

Thank you so much. Jim will actually go catch up with him and find out what he's doing. Version. Tell us the role of the flight director. Well, the flight director puts together a procedure of all the critical events that happen to make sure that the spacecraft is healthy, that the instrument is healthy, as well as all the people who need to run the spacecraft are all ready to go.

And, you know, this room really kicks into high gear after launch. Absolutely. So then after that, when we have all these people who are ready, they're waiting to get the signal that the spacecraft has turned on, and it's the tumbling and it's starting to send the signals to all the people who are running it, as well as and critical people like navigation to know where the spacecraft is, and then tell the ground stations where to look for the spacecraft to get all the important data. There's a huge number of people that have to come together to make things work. In this case, we have the systems which built the spacecraft and the telescope.

They're going to be here to monitor all that, to make sure it's healthy. We have people from Caltech who built the camera, which is going to be giving us our critical data. They're going to be here, as well as all the other people from JPL who are bringing this together to make sure that it all works together. And finally, can you tell us about a fun tradition we have here at JPL that involves some lucky peanuts? Oh, absolutely.

So the Lucky peanuts have been involved with JPL's exploration of space from the very early days. And so we always think of them as a valuable tradition to make things go well. Now, we also actually have some lucky peanuts here with us, and I think for a snack, although all the way here, definitely we need a little bit more of that. Good luck for separation coming up. I'll take us through separation.

And now let's send it back to Jesse Anderson in Hawthorne with a look at SpaceX's history of supporting the next generation of space exploration with NASA. It's incredible having the opportunity to support NASA's science missions to space, just like today's mission. In fact, the last month, last month was the 10th anniversary of the very first mission Falcon nine and SpaceX launch for NASA. The Discover Space Weather mission, which launched in February of 2015, which you can see there on your screen. Since first taking flight in 2010, Falcon nine and Falcon Heavy have completed more than 450 launches and more than 383 flights.

As the first orbital class rocket capable of flight, Falcon nine has helped drive down launch costs while increasing flight cadence, making space more accessible for all types of missions. Falcon is helping NASA build our future in space through contracts like the commercial Commercial Lunar Payload Services Initiative and agreements like the one behind today's mission, the NASA Launch Services two contract. SpaceX is enabling access to space at a cost and cadence that no other vehicle flying today can match, unlocking a wide array of new government, commercial and scientific opportunities and space. Before Falcon nine, launching to space was infrequent and cost much more than it does today. Lowering the cost of access to space is the foundation for humanity's next steps into the solar system.

More launches accelerate development, enabling more small satellite and private research customers to launch their work to space, which in turn help stimulate the wider space economy here on Earth, and serving both cargo and human spaceflight missions. Dragon has visited the International Space Station 45 times. In addition to NASA's crewed missions, Falcon nine and Dragon are advancing human spaceflight through private astronaut missions as well, including the axiom missions Inspiration4, Polaris, Dawn, and our upcoming From to mission and missions like SpaceX's transporter and Bandwagons rideshare programs help make access to space even more affordable. By sharing the cost of a single launch across multiple customers. All this to say, reusability is the key innovation that is making space more accessible.

Now we are t plus 23 minutes into today's mission and in a few minutes, in about 15 minutes or so, we will be reigniting that second stage to continue the journey with X and PUNCH. We'll send it back to Riquelme. Thank you. Jesse PUNCH, along with students from the University of Colorado Boulder, are bringing ancient solar observations to life. They're project solar stones transforms historic petroglyphs into art.

Let's take a look at how it's connecting the past to modern science. We sitting next to me here are what we call our solar stones. And although we did not originally create the images depicted on these tablets, we replicated them from ancient petroglyphs down in Chaco Canyon National Park. They were created around a thousand years ago by the Ancestral Pueblo people. There.

So this over here is the final version of our tablet. And it is a depiction of what we believe is a total solar eclipse around the year 1097. And the reason we believe that is because looking at this, it has all the telltale signs of an eclipse. It has an occultation in the center where the moon would be blotting out the sun. This very circular shape.

It has the solar corona out and along the sides and up here on the top is what is believed to be a reflection of Venus. While these tiles would be really good for any learner, we collaborated with the Colorado School of the blind so that we could make these tablets accessible to low vision learners. Space is typically a very visual field. You look up at the stars, you look at pictures of space. But if you can't see that, then you're pretty much completely blocked out from being able to study this and be able to understand this part of history.

And so this way, we have an exhibit that people can learn from if they are sighted or not sighted. It took a lot of time to figure out how much detail we needed, how deep the objects needed to be, what textures we needed to use, a lot of these things that we didn't expect. We gained context through lots of user testing. So I think this project is really valuable because it allows people to interact with space in a completely different framework. Every person has something they can contribute to the study of space.

And so our hope is that not only can the blind and low vision community be included in this part of history, but that sighted learners can potentially learn things easier with a tactile experience. Those solar stones are so cool. And with us now is PUNCH principal investigator Craig DeForest. So glad you could join us, Craig. Thank you for having me.

And I see you brought some examples with you today. I did indeed. So PUNCH is studying the sun, astrophysics at home right around us. And in that we're carrying on a tradition that goes all the way back to the ancients. So this is a 3D printed representation of, what may be the oldest representation of the solar corona, in a durable medium.

This was, recorded life size. It's this large. Some somebody about a thousand years ago chipped this into the rock right near what is now the visitor center at Chaco Canyon. And this is consistent with and many believe it to be a representation of the solar eclipse of 1097, which occurred over Chaco Canyon. People actually witnessed it and observed the corona around us.

So that ties us from the ancients to the modern esoterica of space flight. And why was it important for Chaco Canyon to be the location for the PUNCH mission? Solar stones? So we organized our outreach program around ancient and modern sun watching. And Chaco was a large center of culture.

About a thousand years ago, the folks who lived here at that time, had a long history of science. The technology that they had in hand, and of observing the sun around them to predict their environment and their future in much the same way that we do today. Though, of course, they were looking for things like agricultural planning times and things like that. But that thread of human curiosity, looking at the environment around us, extends all the way to what we do at NASA today. So speaking of what we do at NASA today, so PUNCH has a coronagraph that sort of mimics a solar eclipse, right.

And that allows us to study the corona. Can you explain how that works? Certainly. So normally we can't see the sun's corona or the much fainter solar wind that PUNCH image. And the reason for that is the sky is too bright.

The sun is very bright in the sky. The sky is very bright. We normally can't see the corona unless the moon blocks the sun out. When we're standing in the shadow of the moon, we can see around the planetoid to see the solar corona extending out into space. But that doesn't stop.

That extends all the way out and washes over the Earth. So PUNCH is in space. We can, instead of the moon, apply a very carefully crafted piece of metal to cast a shadow on our camera and allow us to see the Corona 24 seven around the clock now. And you know, we really appreciate your expertise. We have some PUNCH questions coming in for viewers.

Do you mind if we answer a few right now? Let's do it. All right. Let's see what we have here. We have Rosindell Acosta on YouTube wants to know how does the satellite improve our ability to predict phenomena such as solar storms and their impact on Earth?

So, PUNCH will allow us to forecast space weather much better than we can now. Right now, we look at the space near the sun, the corona, and observe storms forming and leaving the sun. They streak out across the solar system at a million miles an hour or more. And then we extrapolate all the way across the void to our planet. We don't have a way of measuring them in transit.

So with PUNCH, we'll be able to track them in 3D as they make the entire journey to the Earth. So that's very similar to what we see. If you saw the weather report earlier, we always look at those geosynchronous images of the Earth to track weather storms as they cross the face of the planet. We hope to do the same type of thing for space weather forecasting, where we can track the storms rather than just taking samples here and there for our loves. Weather forecasting now.

So show me that, Kelly on Instagram wants to know why is PUNCH a constellation of satellites? So PUNCH is a constellation because we want to look out from the sun in all directions, up to 45 degrees from the star. That's a 90 degree field of view. It would go from the horizon to the zenith. We had to get our spacecraft too close to the ground stations, because we wanted to radio a lot of data back to the Earth.

That meant there was an enormous planet in the way. So we had to make the instrument as large as the planet to look out in all directions. The only way to do that was to mounted on four spacecraft. It makes sense. All right, Craig, thank you so much for your expertise.

We really appreciate it. And we will be taking more questions later on the broadcast. So keep them coming using the hashtag ask NASA. And as we approach SPHEREx spacecraft separation bar. Let's check back in with Megan MC and Jesse.

Welcome back to space X in Hawthorne, California. Megan MC and I are just outside of Mission Control, where teams continue to monitor Falcon nine second stage. And we have a view here, that we're looking at. And we're seeing that stage two is currently coasting near Antarctica right now. So, where it needs to be, we are we are loving the trajectory and seeing the data that we're getting back.

The Falcon nine lifted off of Vandenberg Space Force Base about 31 minutes ago. It's carrying two. NASA's science mission, SPHEREx and PUNCH, and both are headed to a sun synchronous orbit around 650km above the Earth. Yeah. What does that mean for us?

That means that we will be passing over the same part of the Earth at roughly the same local solar time each day. That means that the lighting conditions are consistent for observations, which is important to spherical and point for SPHEREx that provides a consistent illumination condition, reducing background noise from the varying sun angles, and for PUNCH it keeps them in a fixed sun. Earth viewing geometry crucial for tracking the solar winds. Continuous evolution. In short, this orbit allows both missions to maximize their scientific observations with minimal error interfering from the Earth's shadow.

Yeah, basically SPHEREx likes the sun and PUNCH does not like the sun. So they're they're really what's another way to say so they're really writing that day night line and it's just perfect. You know that's why again we're flying these two missions together. So again we're going to gather some really, really great science here. X is going to map our entire universe to gather data on billions of stars and galaxies.

And then PUNCH is going to study our sun to really better forecast space weather and how it affects us. And the second stage with SPHEREx and PUNCH will cost for another about seven more minutes before we have another ignition of the Mach engine. And then following that, we will deploy SPHEREx first and then PUNCH’s four spacecraft. As always, we're planning to have live views of each of those deployments starting at two plus 40 minutes. Yes, we can't wait.

So we'll see you back here soon. For now, let's send it back to the hosts at Vandenberg Space Force Base, with Raquel and Farrah. Thank you so much. Turning our attention back to SPHEREx, the space telescope is gearing up to map the entire sky like never before with special photon shield and an ultra cool design. Here's how it will spot hidden cosmic secrets in infrared light.

This is SPHEREx, NASA's cosmic map maker. It will scan the entire sky, charting the positions of hundreds of millions of galaxies. But why does it look like my dog? After his last visit to the foot, these concentric cones help keep spirits cool and shielded from nearby bright objects. Anyway, continue.

Of course, SPHEREx has three cones, which are called photon shields. They block light and heat from the sun and the Earth. That's a big deal, because without those shields, the telescopes detectors would be blinded. But SPHEREx also needs to be cold because it detects infrared light or wavelengths slightly longer than what the human eye can see. Infrared is emitted by warm objects on Earth and out in the universe.

It's also emitted by the telescope. Keeping it cold reduces the infrared glow, which lets spirits see faint objects that are really, really far away. That's right. These aren't cones of shame. They're SPHEREx cones of beams.

Here you can see one of SPHEREx three cones being assembled. They sit atop the shiny jewel of a structure called a V groove radiator. The mirrored surface directs heat out into space, cooling the telescope and the infrared detectors, cooling them to -350°F. That is cold spirits can help us study everything from what happened a few seconds after the Big Bang to where water comes from in planetary systems. That's why its full name is spectrophotometer for history of the universe, Epoch of Reionization, and ISIS Explorer.

And I'm sorry, could you say that one more time? You can just keep calling it SPHEREx? And so I will the V groove radiator and the photon shields surround the heart of SPHEREx, the telescope. It's a feat of modern engineering designed with incredible precision, and it looks tilted. That's not a mistake.

That tilt helps it see the entire sky well under the protection of the photon shield. Do you mind if I get back to work? Sure. Let's wrap this up. The cone of fame, the gorgeous jewel, the tilted telescope.

These are all part of NASA's next cosmic map maker. SPHEREx. A passive cooling is really incredible. Absolutely. And actually, spherical instrument scientist Phil Corn gut joins us to talk about that cooling process.

Thanks for being here, Phil. Yes, thanks. So excited. And so indeed, yes. SPHEREx uses a totally passive, cooling process.

That means we have no refrigerators. We have no liquid cryogenic or anything like that. And we use actually the coldness of deep, dark space to bring the temperature of our instrument down. And to show you how that works, we made a little demo here. This is a little thermal model of SPHEREx.

And you can see it's got its three, you know, iconic, photon shields. And then inside there you can see that we've got, a model of the telescope and the focal plane radiator. So back in Pasadena and we took this thing to do a little demonstration to show you how that might work. So we put it up on the roof of the Cahill building for astrophysics, which is actually the building that we assembled the SPHEREx instrument in. And we put it up there with a great view of the night sky.

So there's thermal engineer Brad Moore, and I get everything set up. And the point is that using that night sky, even here on Earth, we can cool it down. So here in this time lapse, as we left it out there overnight, you can see why this is harder. On the earth, those clouds up there, the atmosphere is actually pretty dark in the infrared. Not to mention that that air makes conductive heating between the Earth and the radiator.

You can see also there we left the camera in the foreground. That's actually an infrared camera. So you can see what's happening with the heat glowing off of the telescope inside. So you can see here as we look in the infrared, there's a lot of light coming off of that telescope because it's warm. And as the time lapse goes on, you see that light coming down, that glow that's coming off the infrared as it dumps out to deep space.

If you look to the outside of this, there's a glow around the photons shields, and that's from the Earth coming up. And so inside it looks dark because it's reflecting the cold sky from, from, the photon shields. And as we go on, you can see that that light comes down in our telescope is, is really is getting cooler. So the next morning, you know, we come in and, we'll see what happened to our experiment. There's Brad and I come, and you see the glow from our hot coffee.

This is an infrared video. So you see all the light that's actually glowing off of us at room temperature? Here we are looking in there to see what we found, and that's what it looks like. That radiator was nice and frosty. You can see when I swipe my finger across it, there's all that do on there.

And that's because we cooled down using passive cooling below the dew point. And we condensed water made a little frost on the outside. And yeah, we, we that we, we did some passive cooling on Earth. Well, that's actually what my car looked like this morning with the windshield wipers filled with do. That's right.

And that's actually passive cooling. And I bet you if you looked at where your car was parked, it's actually had a great view of the sky. And if you've maybe parked under, you know, like a garage lid or, or a tree or something, you wouldn't have that because it didn't get to passively cool. And so it's going to use that passive cooling to detect those super faint galaxies. Right.

That's right. Yeah. And like so as you saw in that video, which was an infrared one, things are actually glowing like crazy. So we're trying to detect, you know, light that comes from tiny blips of these galaxies all the way across the on the other side of the universe. So in order to get there, we have to cool down the, the foreground, because all that light is just swamping us, and we've got to get the light from the telescope going down so we can see those tiny blips across, across the universe.

Will Phil, thank you so much for joining us. Now, let's head back to the team in Hawthorne, California for a status update. All right. We're now 39 minutes into the mission. And coming up is what's called siesta.

And that's when SpaceX will reignite its second stage engine, which you see right on your screen. There. And we are expecting that siesta. This is the second burn for this mission to ignite. There it is, right on time.

You could see that there on your screen. Now this is about a 52nd burn for this burn. And this extra burn. This is a single Merlin vacuum engine, has about 220,500 pounds of thrust and burn just for about 50s. Doesn't seem like much, but it's just enough to take the second stage with the payloads attached to its target.

A drop off orbit. That's exactly right, Jesse. This, burn will put friction and PUNCH exactly where we need to be getting ready for spherical deployment and exciting time. I know Farrah is looking forward to that one. So are we.

But things continue to look good. And there you could see on your screen that the, back engine is now shutting down nominal orbit insertion. And, you know, the second burn is actually a lot earlier than in other missions, because, again, SPHEREx has to avoid the sun even on its way up to that sun synchronous orbit. Yeah. As Mark Hammond mentioned earlier, the earlier second burn is a planned, burn to ensure that SPHEREx X maintains that sun avoidance while achieving its intended orbit.

And we heard nominal insertion there. This timing helps prevent the exposure to excessive solar radiation, keeps our thermal conditions that we just heard about within our limits, and ensures that proper instrumentation performance on the spacecraft getting ready for this trajectory and separation. And we did have a confirmation of second engine cutoff as well as good orbital insertion. As Mike called out, there. And we are coming up.

In a few minutes, we will have actually in about 30s, we will have payload deploy of SPHEREx. We've got some great live views there on your screen. Earth looks amazing. There. That is a really great view and we're glad to have it again.

We're expecting that deploy at 4156 about there. SPHEREx was designed to operate for at least two years, but the team says if all goes well it could operate much longer. I'm expecting deployment here and just here. I think separation confirmed. And there we are, the call out.

And now you can see that there on your screen SPHEREx is drifting away from Falcon nines second stage confirming deployment. Wahoo! It took everything I mean not to know. Yeah. So excited.

Are you? Are you far? Far. Is it the host test right now? Jumping up and down I'm sure.

Yeah yeah. Again, great live views. It's always nice to see. And again, this is a great opportunity for the spacecraft team to to see it happen in real time. So now the spacecraft has a three minute pass over a ground station in Antarctica.

You might have heard it mentioned a couple of times in the broadcast. Troll is what that ground station is called, and the team hopes to confirm an initial signal with the spacecraft. Yeah, that initial signal will primarily be gathering engineering data for its health and status at this time. And once they confirm that and then it's ready to be operational, spirits will then transition into its science phase, starting with calibration and test observations over the next few days, weeks that far ahead mentioned. And, another pass over another ground station in Norway, at about T plus 80 minutes.

So about 40 minutes from now, they will start working on that and confirm that everything looks great on spherical. So we're just waiting to hear that initial engineering data. Check from on AOS, for SPHEREx, where they start receiving that engineering data just to make sure everything is good there at troll those iconic cones around the spacecraft again, you can still make it out as it gets farther and farther from the second stage. That actually, let's take a look inside the mission director Center. So that is, one of the rooms that we have at Vandenberg Space Force Base.

And sitting inside there, we have NASA personnel, but we also have SPHEREx and PUNCH, personnel. Actually, if you look at the front row of your screen directly to the right of, the aisle that is Jamie Bok, and he's the principal investigator for SPHEREx. Actually, I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to be looking at him from the reaction, I don't know, I'm looking at whole room. I think they're they're going to be just as excited. He waved.

I think he heard us. You're watching. Oh, we're watching him. He's watching us. Yeah, we're waiting for that initial AOS, for that engineering check out.

And that team in the mission director center there at 836 at Vandenberg Space Force Base. I know is excited to, see this deployment also. Yeah. And he's, in that first row, he's joined by, some, some more, spacecraft team members, as well as from, some leadership at JPL. So really glad to just see the whole team there, waiting for, again, this important milestone.

And we have this five minute or this three minutes pass with this ground station. So anywhere in this time, if we're able to get a high. Hello? Quick acquisition of signal, that would be a great sign for the team. And then those subsequent passes over different ground stations.

Again, Norway as well as Antarctica. No. Alaska. Fairbanks, Alaska. We'll give them an opportunity to get even more information and more data from the spacecraft.

Beautiful views from second stage. Their second stage perform very well tonight. Still continuing its mission. With that second burn, we still have PUNCH on board. And things looking great there as, second stage continues to coast and makes some of my favorite things about launch is really the views from space that you, you don't get to see from down here, but we get to see it from the, the spacecraft out in space during these missions.

And these were some incredible views tonight. Yeah. It really puts into first out what we're doing here. We are sending spacecraft that do incredible science out, into an orbit around the Earth and all the data that's collected. You know, this is science that touches all different kinds of disciplines.

Specifically for SPHEREx, right? It's, again, just being able to see and map our, our universe in a way that we've never done it before. It's going to really answer some of, astrophysics biggest questions. And then for PUNCH, studying our sun and understanding how it can affect us. In terms of space weather, you know, comms going down, telecommunication satellites, things like that, all affected by space weather.

So PUNCH is really going to help us understand how to better predict when space weather might affect us. And it looks like we did lose acquisition of signal from the second stage. But the mission isn't over yet. Falcon nine second stage is still carrying NASA's PUNCH mission for satellites that will study our sun's corona, and those will start deploying around 52 minutes after launch. So be sure.

Be sure to stick around for that just a few minutes from now. Thank you so much, Megan, MC and Jesse. And for what is next for SPHEREx? So of course we would have liked to hear from it right now. But this you know, it's a very short pass as you heard.

And so the, SPHEREx is continuing to orbit around the Earth. It's getting itself into the right configuration. It's going to go over another ground station called Fall Up in Norway in about 40 minutes. So we'll hopefully hear from it then. And so we'll be anxiously waiting to hear from her and to tell us that, she's doing well in space.

Well, thank you so much for that update. Foreign. And joining us now is project scientist Olivia. Olivia, thank you so much for joining us. Pleasure.

So Olivia, tell us, SPHEREx is taking a 3D map of the universe, right. How and why is it doing that? Yeah, that's a very good question and thanks for this question. It's really at the core of our mission goals and also its design. So let me start with a Y.

And to explain you the way I would use this crystal ball here. Don't worry I'll use a crystal ball to explain the past and not to predict the future. So but if you look closely at this crystal ball here, what you see inside, you see all kind of small filamentary structures, elongated structures that connect and intersect some kind of three dimensional spiderweb. So this turns out to be a really good visualization, a representation of how galaxies are distributed throughout the universe. And in fact, we call that the cosmic web.

So what's Ferrix wants to do is make a three dimensional map of the cosmic web over the old sky. And the reason we want to do that is simply the fact that by making this map of the cosmic web of us all sky, we can get very unique insight about the very first moment of the universe, when the universe was only a fraction of a second or so. That's really what we want to do. And so to get to the first part of your question, the how so that we will do that by really mapping that all sky in 102 colors. And so why do we want to use colors.

It's very simple. So if you look at look at the sky you take a picture. You will see exactly. You know exactly where stars and galaxies are. But if you want to know how far they are from you, if you really want to measure this third dimension, you need to use a color information.

By using colors, you can really tell how far a galaxy is from. You can really tell the distance between you and a galaxy, and so you can construct a huge old sky which is 102 colors. You can really construct a whole sky three dimensional map of the cosmic web. And that's really what we want to do. You know, how does specs use color when mapping.

Right. So the right. So and yeah we will use to make this map. But we'll use what we would like to use that rainbow, rainbow colored glasses. And so you can think if, when you use rainbow glasses, the, the what's very interesting about it is that the color you see slightly is different depending on exactly where you look at.

And so you could say that's Ferrix would use some kind of astronomical grade rainbow glasses that we put in front of our detectors. And so that means that each part of our detectors will see slightly different, slightly different colors. And so by planning a very careful sequence of pictures of exposures, we can really reconstruct all sky mapping, hold on to color. And that's really what we will do. That's how we will get this color and two color that we need to make this map, this three dimensional map of the cosmic plane.

So great. Thank you so much for your insight, Olivia. My pleasure. So we are actually now heading back to Hawthorne, California for an update. Thanks, Raquel.

We are just about a minute away from SPHEREx coming up here where T plus 51 minutes into NASA's SPHEREx and PUNCH missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base. About nine minutes ago, we watched SPHEREx separate from the Falcon nine second stage, and the SPHEREx team then confirmed, and we did not confirm, acquisition of signal just yet. We will confirm that at the next opportunity, but now it's PUNCHes turn. Yeah. So they're going to deploy in two batches.

Right. So the first two are going to deploy around T plus 52 minutes and 16 seconds. So that's about 45 seconds from now. And then the other at T plus 5307. Again some great views that we're seeing here from the second stage.

Looking down on Earth carrying four PUNCH spacecraft. And as you talked about those four PUNCH spacecraft deploying in two sets, one of the reasons we are doing that is to, separate these sets so that we can get them started on their way and make sure they're heading in the right directions and avoid the second stage and anything else, that might be in the path. So, keeping PUNCH, to make sure that everything is successful, deploy one set and deploy a second set a few minutes late, a few seconds later. That will help, everything with deployment tonight and call this mission to an end, getting, PUNCH on its way for its science two separation confirmed. Wow.

Look at that. Actually see them. Okay. And we are that callout. And that is amazing.

Yeah. PUNCH drifting away from the Falcon nine second stage. That is the first of two payload deployments. And we are expecting the next one coming up in just about 30s or so. Yeah, I'll tell you, seeing that, that that was just as incredible as seeing spirit, separate, those two satellites of separating and then the next two coming up, getting that constellation out there so PUNCH can do their science.

That's very important. And I know the PUNCH team is is looking forward to that. Yeah. And we are deploying these in a bit of a different orientation from SPHEREx. So we did see SPHEREx drift away very slowly from the second stage.

And these payloads are going in a different direction. So we see one and three separation confirmed. Look at that. That was amazing. And it's just the of all.

Yeah. The second batch right there. It is really cool to see. And again, I just know that the spacecraft teams really appreciate this opportunity to see this happen in real time. So what an incredible, incredible view.

All right. So the PUNCH team is going to have to wait a bit longer to confirm their acquisition of signal for both, sets of spacecraft. They can you talk to us about, when they expect to be able to confirm signals? Yeah. The PUNCH team will have to wait.

About 30 minutes begin. To acquire signal from one of the spacecraft. Now that we have separated them successfully and things look great. This will help to confirm the signal for all four. Or they will hope to confirm the signal to all four satellites within an hour after separation today.

So a little bit more time for the PUNCH team to verify everything is good. But it was awesome to see separation tonight and PUNCH on its way. Yeah. It's again important, to to mention that again. For separate spacecraft, we will have to acquire signal with each of those spacecraft.

But again, they're hoping to acquire signal, with all of those super four spacecraft. That's a tongue twister. Four spacecraft, within an hour from from now, which is one we just separated. So, we will, not be able to cover that live for you guys, but we will be updating our, social media. And you can also check out blogs.

nasa. gov/PUNCH. Yeah. And these views have been so incredible. It has been such an exciting mission so far.

And this really is just the beginning of the journey for SPHEREx X and for, PUNCH. I know we've we've been live for about 55 minutes, with this mission. But this is the beginning of the journey of a very long journey for both, missions, both spacecraft doing some great science, as we've heard throughout the show, with the mapping of our universe and the solar wind studies and, and, and I got to tell you, looking at the shots on the screen, I'm kind of thankful to, Fara and the team for the sun avoidance requirement, because we are seeing we are seeing some great views of the Earth. From our second stage here, as we have, deployed these satellites. It's just amazing to see, see these live views from space, as you mentioned earlier.

Jesse. Yeah. And, like you just mentioned, sometimes we get a lot of sun glare, into the camera on the second stage vehicle. But because we are avoiding the sun, just like you said, we have some epic views of Earth there. They look so clear.

It's it's incredible. The, the the what? What am I trying to say? Like the pixels that we can get from being so far away from Earth. It is just incredible.

Yeah. And again, if you're just joining us, you're listening to me, Megan Cruz. And this is Jesse, from space who was just chatting. And then the only guy on here. So, you know, when he's talking to me, also from NASA and the three of us here at Hawthorne, and we're commentating through, some of the, the, incredible views that we're seeing from space right now.

You know, a couple of minutes ago, we saw the SPHEREx spacecraft, deploy from, the second stage. And then a few minutes after that, we saw in two batches, all four PUNCH space spacecraft also deploy. So it's been really great, being able to commentate through this and, and be able to share this with, with the public. But for now, let's send it back to Raquel and Farrah. Well, thank you for that update, Megan and Jesse.

So tonight, NASA's Launch Services program has successfully launched SPHEREx and PUNCH. Joining us now is tonight's assistant launch manager for NASA's Launch Services program, Tim Dunn. Tim, another successful launch for NASA's Launch Services program. How are you feeling in this moment? Well, Ricky, I'm feeling incredibly excited.

Hopefully I'm representative of the team. I just left a building on North Vandenberg, the space Launch and Landing Center, where there was incredible positive energy after launch. And then I was on the phone with our NASA launch manager, Denton Gibson, on the right down here. And, we got spacecraft set of SPHEREx, and I could hear in the background the cheering and yelling in that room, and I know it was replicated in the rooms here at building 836 with all of the team present here at Vandenberg. You probably hear far at that.

Yeah, probably from the parking lot out there. But wonderful. So tell us what's next for LSP. Oh, gosh. What's next?

Well, let's see, what's it? We have some different missions this year, so this was what we call a full up NASA launch Services mission. And we've got two more of those this year far. We've got one called iMap in September back from the Cape. Also.

It's a nice space tonight and it has Rideshares on it also. Yes, indeed. Swiffer and Carruthers will be the rideshares there. And then we come back to Vandenberg at the end of the year in November, and we launch another JPL mission, the Sentinel six B mission. So we always love coming out here to Vandenberg and looking really forward to that.

But also scattered throughout the year, we have what we call our Vader missions. There are class D more risk tolerant missions, maybe smaller spacecraft, but the first one up will be this summer where we're launching a spacecraft to Mars, the escapade mission. So. And that would go on, the New Glenn rocket, which is Blue Origin's new rocket that successfully launched in January of this year. So looking forward to that one.

And then we have, tracers mission, just ahead of that in the May time frame, we believe, from Vandenberg here. And then we finish up in, the September October time frame with, two missions that look like they're going to ride together. The, Pandora mission riding with the T two mission. So we've got across the board, big spacecraft, small spacecraft, both coasts. Just a lot of excitement in launch services program in 2025.

Busy year for you. Yes. Very busy, but that's a good thing. Yeah. Yes.

And so, Tim, thank you so much for that. We actually have an acquisition of Signal Update from the team at Hawthorne. Required. Well, we can. Here we go.

All right, everyone, we are now 59 minutes, 51 seconds. All, from liftoff again, we watch the Falcon nine rocket lift off with two NASA missions. We had SPHEREx as well as PUNCH. We did watch, all five spacecraft deploy from, the Falcon nine second stage. We had some great views of those.

Again, live. And then we are currently waiting on AOS for all five spacecraft. Mike talked to us about the opportunities. You know, the spacecraft team for SPHEREx was hoping that, we would be able to confirm a signal within the first couple of minutes after separation. But we did also know that's a short three minute pass.

It's this next one that that's a longer opportunity where they hope to really acquire that signal. Yeah. Their next opportunity will be over the, Fairbanks ground station. And they'll be looking for checking out SPHEREx and making sure things are healthy and looking good for, spherical. As they get into getting ready for, conditioning for science mission and all.

But again, we did separate them very well into a proper orbit. Things looking good. PUNCH separated, and we're about, 20 minutes, I think, from, getting signal for the PUNCH team. And they'll start off, receiving signal for one, and then in about an hour, get signal for all four to verify that PUNCH is good. And so the teams will be on console monitoring that and looking for that.

And I'm sure that we will hear about that through our social media stuff, through NASA in that. But, I will say tonight's launch was amazing. Seeing the separation of all five spacecraft was great. And, you know, I can't this has been just an absolute great day to see this launch with everything that we've we've gone through for this mission. Yeah.

So, again, waiting for those opportunities, to acquire signal from all of the spacecraft. Again, we are looking at t plus around, 80 minutes for, the, SPHEREx spacecraft and then also for the PUNCH spacecraft. The first opportunity for at least one of them is about 74 minutes after, after, separation. So, again, a really great time. We were so happy to be here with you.

And, yeah, it was awesome. It was. I will say it was awesome being with both of you. But thank you, Jesse, for having us. Oh, I work with them all the time.

I know it's been so great having you both here. I've had so much fun on this mission, and we'd also like to thank NASA for their trust in us and for being a frequent flier with SpaceX. We'd also like to thank the range and the FAA for their ongoing support of our missions. And we've got another busy year ahead of us. So check us out at Space.

com for up to date missions and schedules, and follow us at SpaceX on X for updates. All right. Thank you guys so much again for tuning in. And we'll toss it back to the host desk. Now.

Thank you so much. And we also have updates that will be coming in on co. nasa. gov and blogs dot nasa. gov slash PUNCH blogs dot nasa.

gov slash spherex. And before we wrap things up, let's take one more look at tonight's Falcon nine launch of SPHEREx and PUNCH. T-minus 15 seconds. Ten. Nine.

Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four.

Three. Two. One. Engine. Go, spirit!

Go! PUNCH, spear, ax and PUNCH on their way to the universe like never before. And revolutionize space weather forecasting. We are t plus 30s into flight, and we are currently firing all nine of those m1 d engines. And after about 50s, we'll begin throttling down those engines, which slows the vehicle down just slightly in order to power nominal order to prepare for passing through Max-Q, and that is maximum aerodynamic pressure.

That's the largest structural load that vehicle will see during a sense of slowing the vehicle down, vehicles. Supersonic.

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