NASA has launched a $488m infra-red mission to map the distribution of galaxies and study cosmic inflation. The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission was launched yesterday from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California by a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket.

The postponement, driven primarily by thick clouds, was the second scrub of the flight since an issue with the rocket on Saturday night.

"EZIE is the first mission dedicated exclusively to studying the electrojets," Larry Kepko, an EZIE mission scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in a statement. "It does so with a completely new measurement technique."