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NASA has chosen Elon Musk’s SpaceX to help with an astrophysics mission called SPHEREx.
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SPHEREx, a space telescope, is to be launched in 2024 via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for a two-year mission.
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The data collected will help astronomers understand how the universe was created, NASA said.
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NASA has selected Elon Musk’s SpaceX to send a telescope into orbit for a two-year astrophysics mission from 2024, the agency said in a press release on Thursday.
The mission, called SPHEREx, costs NASA about $ 98.8 million.
SPHEREx is a space telescope that, according to NASA, would examine the sky in near-infrared light, which the human eye cannot see. The data it collects will help astronomers understand the evolution of the universe and the creation of galaxies, he said.
The mission would be launched in June 2024 and would blow up a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Space Launch Complex-4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, NASA said.
The mission would search for water and organic molecules in areas where stars are formed from gas and dust, and find out if new planets are forming around stars, NASA said.
Thomas Zurbuchen, co-administrator of NASA’s Directorate of Science Mission, said that the mission in 2019 “will produce an unprecedented galactic map with ‘fingerprints’ from the first moments in the history of the universe.’
Read more: Leaked FAA document reveals that SpaceX wants to build its own rocket fuel power plants in Texas
SpaceX tweeted On Thursday, the SPHEREx mission would collect data on more than 300 million galaxies and investigate how the universe was created.
NASA has selected a space telescope called SPHEREx for the 2019 mission via Spacefly.
SPHEREx is the latest in a long list of NASAs that have SpaceX.
The latter was agreed in November, when NASA certified SpaceX to launch astronauts on its Crew Dragon spacecraft, making it the first commercial spacecraft ever to receive the certification.
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