![]() ![]() ![]() “We’re not just concerned with how cold SPHEREx is, but also that its temperature stays the same,” said JPL’s Konstantin Penanen, payload manager for the mission. This removes heat carried through the supports from the room-temperature spacecraft bus that contains the computer and electronics. Sitting below the photon shields, each is composed of a series of wedges that redirect infrared light so it bounces through the gaps between the shields and out into space. ![]() But to ensure SPHEREx gets down to its frigid operating temperature, it also needs something called a V-groove radiator: three conical mirrors, each like an upside-down umbrella, stacked atop one another. The outer photon shield will block light and heat from the Sun and Earth, and the gaps between the cones will prevent heat from making its way inward toward the telescope. Because that light would interfere with its detectors, the telescope has to be kept cold – below minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit (about minus 210 degrees Celsius). Even the telescope can create infrared light. Infrared light is also sometimes called heat radiation because all warm objects emit it. SPHEREx will do all this by detecting infrared light, a range of wavelengths longer than the visible light human eyes can see. The outside has aluminum sheets, and inside is an aluminum honeycomb structure that looks like cardboard – light but sturdy.” “It doesn’t look that way, but the shields are actually quite light and made with layers of material like a sandwich. “SPHEREx has to be quite agile because the spacecraft has to move relatively quickly as it scans the sky,” said JPL’s Sara Susca, deputy payload manager and payload systems engineer for the mission. The spacecraft will sweep over every section of the sky, like scanning the inside of a globe, to complete two all-sky maps every year. Three cones, each nestled within the other, will surround SPHEREx’s telescope to protect it from the light and heat of the Sun and Earth. Giving the observatory its distinctive shape are its cone-shaped photon shields, which are being assembled in a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Short for Specto-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer, SPHEREx resembles a bullhorn, albeit one that will stand almost 8.5 feet tall (2.6 meters) and stretch nearly 10.5 feet (3.2 meters) wide. NASA’s SPHEREx space telescope is beginning to look much like it will when it arrives in Earth orbit and starts mapping the entire sky. Key elements are coming together for NASA’s SPHEREx mission, a space telescope that will create a map of the universe like none before. ![]()
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