NASA, SpaceX Reveal New Launch Date For SPHEREx, PUNCH Missions — Check Key Details

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Elon Musk's SpaceX are now planning to launch SPHEREx and PUNCH missions on March 6. The launch was originally scheduled to take place on Feb. 27.

"The launch window opens at 10:09 PM EST from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California," NASA confirmed on Tuesday.

Both missions will be launched on a single rocket provided by SpaceX. The SPHEREx mission (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer), dubbed by NASA as 'sky mapper', aims to dig deeper into the Big Bang theory. It will focus on understanding what followed after the immediate seconds following the Big Bang Theory, the concept that delves into the origin of the universe. 

The PUNCH mission (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere), also called 'Sun gazer', will observe the Sun's corona as it transitions into the solar wind, the US space agency explained.

The launch will be streamed live on NASA's social media platforms and website, beginning at 9:15 PM EST, Mar. 6. This means that Indian viewers can watch the live stream at 7:45 AM on Mar. 7.

For its mission, SPHEREx plans to collect data from over 100 million stars in the Milky Way and 450 other galaxies to explore the origins of the universe. The two-year planned mission will search for water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and other key ingredients in clouds of gases and dust in space.

NASA scientists believe that tiny dust grains in space may hold the secret to understanding the origins of water in the universe. While NASA's past missions have located these key life ingredients at several potential targets, SPHEREx observatory is the first to be "uniquely equipped to conduct a large-scale survey of the galaxy in search of water ice and other frozen compounds," it said.

In this mission, NASA will use four suitcase-sized satellites to decode how the Sun's corona (or outer atmosphere) transitions to the solar wind. It will further study how the structures are formed in the solar winds and how this process impacts our solar system.

This mission holds significance as solar wind and energetic solar events can impact the communication systems and satellite operations on Earth.