NASA and SpaceX’s SPHEREx and PUNCH missions’ launch was delayed on Tuesday due to weather at the site and a ground data-flow issue. This was the second time the space agency had to scrub the launch in as many days. On March 10, ‘unfavourable weather conditions’ at the site and a technical issue with one of the spacecraft pushed it to Tuesday.

As per the latest update, the next launch attempt is scheduled for March 11, with lift-off targeted for 11:10 pm (EDT), i.e., March 12, 8:40 am in India. The weather for the targeted date stands at a 40% probability of violation with thick clouds forecasted.

‘s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) and PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) missions will be aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

NASA, SpaceX Mission Goals

NASA’s newest space telescope SPHEREx mission has three major goals, including creating a 3D map of hundreds of millions of galaxies to study inflation, measuring the total collective glow of galaxies near and far, and searching the Milky Way galaxy for hidden reservoirs of water, carbon dioxide, and other essential ingredients for life and measuring their abundance and availability for newly forming planets.

The sun-focused PUNCH mission will determine the physical processes at different scales that unify the solar corona with the rest of the solar system environment. This will further help scientists to understand the evolution of transient structures, such as coronal mass ejections, in the young solar wind.

The SPHEREx mission will provide an all-sky spectral survey, creating a 3D map of the entire sky in 102 infrared wavelengths. The PUNCH mission, while studying the Sun, will also capture continuous 3D images of the Sun’s corona and the solar wind’s journey into the solar system.