As the agency's SPHEREx space telescope and PUNCH solar mission rode toward their orbital stations at 10:09 p.m. EST (0209 March 9 GMT), members of mission control appeared elated, onlookers who caught a peek at the liftoff cheered, and the scientists who built these missions exuded a blend of relief and excitement.

The SPHEREx telescope will create the most colorful map of the cosmos, while the four satellites of the PUNCH mission track the evolution of the solar wind in three dimensions.

The $488 million Spherex mission aims to explain how galaxies formed and evolved over billions of years, and how the universe expanded so fast in its first moments.

NASA’s newest space telescope rocketed toward orbit Tuesday 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.

It rocketed toward orbit on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The US space agency said the telescope will help explain how galaxies formed a