Besides the telescope, SpaceX’s Falcon rocket provided a lift from Vandenberg Space Force Base for a quartet of Nasa satellites called Punch. From their own separate polar orbit, the satellites will observe the sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, and the resulting solar wind.

The SPHEREx telescope will create the most colorful map of the cosmos, while the four satellites of the PUNCH mission track the evolution of the solar wind in three dimensions.

NASA’s newest space telescope, SPHEREx, has successfully launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, setting off on a groundbreaking mission to map the entire sky in infrared light. The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe,