Nasa launches space telescope to map millions of galaxies

April 2024 image provided by Nasa showing the Spherex (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionisation and Ices Explorer) telescope at BAE Systems in Boulder, Colorado (NASA/AP)

Nasa’s newest space telescope rocketed towards orbit to map the entire sky like never before — a sweeping look at hundreds of millions of galaxies and their shared cosmic glow since the beginning of time.

SpaceX launched the Spherex observatory from California on Tuesday, putting it on course to fly over Earth’s poles. Tagging along were four suitcase-size satellites to study the Sun.