Launching on a SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, SPHEREx will map 450 million galaxies and could help unravel what happened after the Big Bang, while PUNCH will make observations of the sun’s outer atmosphere and learn how the mass and energy there become solar wind.

NASA's SPHEREx observatory is now in space for a two year year mission to create a 3D map of the entire celestial sky. The telescope left the ground on top of a Falcon 9 rocket from a launch pad in California,