SEOUL, Aug. 17 (Yonhap) — A team of South Korean scientists have completed the development of key test equipment for SPHEREx, the world’s first all-sky spectral space telescope being built under the leadership of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Seoul Ministry of Science and ICT said on Wednesday.
The team led by Jeong Woong-seob from the Korea Institute of Astronomy and Space Science (KASI) completed the development of the cryogenic vacuum chamber for SPHEREx and transported and installed the test equipment to the California Institute of Technology in Los Angeles in June, according to the department.
The chamber will allow engineers to test the capabilities of the near-infrared space telescope by recreating simulated space environments. KASI is the only international team participating in the US project launched in 2015. Other participating organizations include the California Institute of Technology, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Johns Hopkins University.
NASA plans to launch SPHEREx in April 2025. The telescope will use a spectrophotometer to perform an all-sky survey that will measure near-infrared spectra from 0.75 to 5.0 micrometers while traveling along a sun-synchronous orbit. .
The mission is expected to last about 30 months after launch and help scientists better understand the origin and history of galaxies and explore the origin of water in planetary systems.