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| Concept of SPHEREx Space Telescope (SPHEREx homepage) © News1 |
The Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Astronomical Research Institute announced on the 6th that they have begun to produce SPHEREx, a space telescope jointly developed with NASA Jet Propulsion Research Institute (JPL) and California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
SPHEREx is a’space telescope for all-day infrared image spectroscopy’, and is the world’s first image spectral exploration of the entire sky.
SPHEREx is capable of observing infrared celestial bodies that are difficult to observe due to the loss of the Earth’s atmosphere on the ground, as well as applying image spectroscopy technology to observe the entire universe in 102 colors.
The image spectroscopy technology is a technology that combines’Imaging’, which can observe a wide area at the same time, and’Spectroscopy’, which measures the change in brightness according to the wavelength of individual objects.
SPHEREx uses a linear spectral filter that was first applied to the NISS (Near-infrared Imaging Spectrometer for Star formation history), which is the next generation of small satellite No. 1 by Cheon Mun-yeon.
SPHEREx is expected to use these observation techniques to create an all-stellar inventory of approximately 2 billion individual celestial bodies in the universe.
In addition, three-dimensional spatial information of the universe can be obtained by reconstructing the observation image of SPHEREx and the emission spectrum of each celestial body.
This is expected to be a clue to solving the mystery of the infrared cosmic background radiation containing information on the theory of cosmic expansion by the rapid expansion of space immediately after the Big Bang and information on galaxy formation and evolution.
In addition, it is expected that the distribution map of water and carbon dioxide, etc. that exist as ice in the Milky Way and the universe can be created and used for research on the exploration of planetary systems where life forms such as the Earth can exist.
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| A schematic diagram of a cryogenic vacuum chamber for the performance test of the SPHEREx space telescope © News1 |
12 organizations, including NASA JPL and Ball Aerospace, including Caltech, the leading organization, participate in the production and operation of SPHEREx, and Moon-Yeon Cheon is the only international organization that is not an American organization.
Moon-Yeon Cheon will lead the development and testing of cryogenic vacuum chambers to be used in the space environment test of the telescope, and will participate in the development of observational data analysis software and core scientific research.
Meanwhile, the completed SPHEREx will be launched in solar synchronous orbit in 2024, and will perform more than 4 all-sky spectral exploration missions in about 2 years and 6 months.
“Through this joint development, the research team has gained confidence in the development of the world’s best space telescope,” said Dr. Jung Woong-seop, Moon-Yeon Chun, the head of research on the Korean side.