SpaceX Falcon 9 : SPHEREx + PUNCH : VSFB SLC-4E : 11/12 March 2025 (03:10 UTC)

[zubenelgenubi]

Remaining launch timeline items:
00:52:16   First two PUNCH satellites deploy
00:53:07   Last two PUNCH satellites deploy

[zubenelgenubi]

PUNCH deploys, 2 by 2.  2 of 4 seen in these views.  PUNCH 1st communication opportunity approximately 30 minutes from deploy time.

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1899672917694353651

All four PUNCH satellites deployed.

[zubenelgenubi]

2nd stage views post-deploys are somewhat unique due to SPHEREx sun avoidance requirement.

[zubenelgenubi]

Near future NASA Launch Services Program launches discussion.

Awaiting Fairbanks AK station pass.

https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1899677056222277932

All mission instruments have successfully deployed, and SPHEREx and PUNCH mission teams will wait to confirm signal.

Watch as SPHEREx slowly moves away from the rocket's second stage and begins its journey.

https://twitter.com/TylerG1998/status/1899677921305887228

Fare thee well, SPHEREx & PUNCH! 🫡

Updated orbital launch count as of Mar. 12:

Earth 🌎 — 47/48

USA 🇺🇸 — 30/30
China 🇨🇳 — 11/12
Russia 🏳️ — 3/3
India 🇮🇳 — 1/1
Japan 🇯🇵 — 1/1
France 🇫🇷 — 1/1

[zubenelgenubi]

Webcast winding down.

Finishing with launch replay.

https://twitter.com/NASA_LSP/status/1899676807202320707

🚀This concludes our launch coverage of NASA’s SPHEREx and PUNCH missions!

You can track the SPHEREx observatory on NASA Eyes here: https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/solar-system/#/sc_spherex…

[catdlr]

Mar 11, 2025
Footage from Los Angeles, CA.
SPHEREx and PUNCH on a rideshare mission. Liftoff from pad 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California March 11th 2025.

[catdlr]

Launch Highlight from NASA

[catdlr]

Booster landing Highlight from NASA

[catdlr]

Fairing Sep highlight

[catdlr]

Special thanks to zubenelgenubi for doing the coverage of tonight's launch.  I appreciated it, and I was involved with work.

[jbenton]

Thanks for the coverage!

I might have been able to see it from all the way in San Diego!
(We didn't see the plume that we've seen for a few Starlink launches, but I was able to make out something that looked like a faint red star moving at about the right speed - and a faint* cone behind it for a brief time - before it passed behind a cloud. I went outside just after stage separation)

I was going to ask this earlier today about yesterday's scrub so as not to interrupt the flow of launch coverage, but I may as well ask now:
They said last night that they don't launch through clouds of a certain thickness as this can cause lighting which could then damage the LV, is that correct? Did I misunderstand? Sorry if this is a rookie question

*meant to include "faint" in the original; this version is a slight edit

[zubenelgenubi]

SPHEREx deploy, 3 minute pass now over Troll, Antarctica; then Fairbanks AK station pass half orbit later.

No communication yet with SPHEREx.

I presume first communication was made via Fairbanks?

Signal Acquired: NASA’s SPHEREx Begins Science Mission
Jason Costa, March 12, 2025

NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) mission controllers celebrate acquisition of signal after launch on Tuesday, March 11, 2025. Photo credit: NASA+
NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) mission controllers on Earth have received full acquisition of signal from the observatory, indicating the spacecraft is functioning nominally and is power positive.

In the weeks ahead, the SPHEREx team will prepare the observatory for its survey operations – conducting calibrations, cooling the telescope to its designed operating temperature, and characterizing its optical performance in space.

Over a two-year planned mission, SPHEREx will then collect data on more than 450 million galaxies along with more than 100 million stars in the Milky Way in order to explore the origins of the universe, contributing to NASA Science’s key goals to discover the secrets of the universe and search for life elsewhere.

The mission’s 3D all-sky map will help scientists answer big-picture questions about the universe. The mission will investigate a cosmic phenomenon called inflation that caused the universe to expand rapidly for a fraction of a second after the big bang, measure the collective glow created by galaxies near and far, including hidden galaxies that have not been individually observed, and search the Milky Way galaxy for hidden reservoirs of water, carbon dioxide, and other essential ingredients for life.

The SPHEREx mission’s ability to scan large sections of the sky quickly and gather data on millions of objects complements the work of more targeted telescopes, like NASA’s Hubble and James Webb, and the observatory’s data will be freely available to scientists around the world, providing a new encyclopedia of information about hundreds of millions of cosmic objects.

Join the online conversation and get mission updates from these accounts:

X: @NASA, @NASAJPL, @NASAUniverse, @NASASun, @NASAKennedy, @NASA_LSP 
Facebook: NASA, NASA’s JPL, NASA Universe, NASASunScience, NASA’s Launch Services Program
Instagram: @NASA, @NASAKennedy, @NASAJPL, @NASAUniverse

For more information about the SPHEREx and PUNCH missions, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/spherex/

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/punch/

This concludes NASA’s live launch coverage.

[cpushack]

Thanks for the coverage!

I might have been able to see it from all the way in San Diego!
(We didn't see the plume that we've seen for a few Starlink launches, but I was able to make out something that looked like a faint red star moving at about the right speed - and a cone behind it for a brief time - before it passed behind a cloud. I went outside just after stage separation)

I was going to ask this earlier today about yesterday's so as not to interrupt the flow of launch coverage, but I may as well ask now:
They said last night that they don't launch through clouds of a certain thickness as this can cause lighting which could then damage the LV, is that correct? Did I misunderstand? Sorry if this is a rookie question

Correct, specifically if the clouds are of low temperature.

This is called the Thick Cloud Rule
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/05/why-weather-rules-exist/

[catdlr]

Highlight of SPHEREx from NASA

[catdlr]

HIghligh from PUNCH deployment from NASA

[catdlr]

RELEASE 25-021

MARCH 12, 2025

 
SCIENCE

NASA Launches Missions to Study Sun, Universe’s Beginning

 

NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) observatory and PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) satellites lift off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on March 11, 2025. Credit: SpaceX


NASA’s newest astrophysics observatory, SPHEREx, is on its way to study the origins of our universe and the history of galaxies, and to search for the ingredients of life in our galaxy. Short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, SPHEREx lifted off at 8:10 p.m. PDT on March 11 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

 

Riding with SPHEREx aboard the Falcon 9 were four small satellites that make up the agency’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, which will study how the Sun’s outer atmosphere becomes the solar wind.

 

“Everything in NASA science is interconnected, and sending both SPHEREx and PUNCH up on a single rocket doubles the opportunities to do incredible science in space,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Congratulations to both mission teams as they explore the cosmos from far-out galaxies to our neighborhood star. I am excited to see the data returned in the years to come.”

 

Ground controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages SPHEREx, established communications with the space observatory at 9:31 p.m. PDT. The observatory will begin its two-year prime mission after a roughly one-month checkout period, during which engineers and scientists will make sure the spacecraft is working properly.

 

“The fact our amazing SPHEREx team kept this mission on track even as the Southern California wildfires swept through our community is a testament to their remarkable commitment to deepening humanity’s understanding of our universe,” said Laurie Leshin, director, NASA JPL. “We now eagerly await the scientific breakthroughs from SPHEREx’s all-sky survey — including insights into how the universe began and where the ingredients of life reside.”

 

The PUNCH satellites successfully separated about 53 minutes after launch, and ground controllers have established communication with all four PUNCH spacecraft. Now, PUNCH begins a 90-day commissioning period where the four satellites will enter the correct orbital formation, and the instruments will be calibrated as a single “virtual instrument” before the scientists start to analyze images of the solar wind.

 

The two missions are designed to operate in a low Earth, Sun-synchronous orbit over the day-night line (also known as the terminator) so the Sun always remains in the same position relative to the spacecraft. This is essential for SPHEREx to keep its telescope shielded from the Sun’s light and heat (both would inhibit its observations) and for PUNCH to have a clear view in all directions around the Sun.

 

To achieve its wide-ranging science goals, SPHEREx will create a 3D map of the entire celestial sky every six months, providing a wide perspective to complement the work of space telescopes that observe smaller sections of the sky in more detail, such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope.

 

The mission will use a technique called spectroscopy to measure the distance to 450 million galaxies in the nearby universe. Their large-scale distribution was subtly influenced by an event that took place almost 14 billion years ago known as inflation, which caused the universe to expand in size a trillion-trillionfold in a fraction of a second after the big bang. The mission also will measure the total collective glow of all the galaxies in the universe, providing new insights about how galaxies have formed and evolved over cosmic time.

 

Spectroscopy also can reveal the composition of cosmic objects, and SPHEREx will survey our home galaxy for hidden reservoirs of frozen water ice and other molecules, like carbon dioxide, that are essential to life as we know it.

 

“Questions like ‘How did we get here?’ and ‘Are we alone?’ have been asked by humans for all of history,” said James Fanson, SPHEREx project manager at JPL. “I think it’s incredible that we are alive at a time when we have the scientific tools to actually start to answer them.”

 

NASA’s PUNCH will make global, 3D observations of the inner solar system and the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, to learn how its mass and energy become the solar wind, a stream of charged particles blowing outward from the Sun in all directions. The mission will explore the formation and evolution of space weather events such as coronal mass ejections, which can create storms of energetic particle radiation that can endanger spacecraft and astronauts.

 

“The space between planets is not an empty void. It’s full of turbulent solar wind that washes over Earth,” said Craig DeForest, the mission’s principal investigator, at the Southwest Research Institute. “The PUNCH mission is designed to answer basic questions about how stars like our Sun produce stellar winds, and how they give rise to dangerous space weather events right here on Earth.”




More About SPHEREx, PUNCH



The SPHEREx mission is managed by NASA JPL for the agency’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA. The mission’s principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available at the NASA-IPAC Infrared Science Archive.

 

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) leads the PUNCH mission and built the four spacecraft and Wide Field Imager instruments at its headquarters in San Antonio, Texas. The Narrow Field Imager instrument was built by the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. The mission is operated from SwRI’s offices in Boulder, Colorado, and is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

 

NASA’s Launch Services Program, based out of the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, provided the launch service for SPHEREx and PUNCH.

 

For more about NASA’s science missions, visit:

http://science.nasa.gov

-end-

[catdlr]

Full HD replay of the launch

[jbenton]

[snip]

I was going to ask this earlier today about yesterday's so as not to interrupt the flow of launch coverage, but I may as well ask now:
They said last night that they don't launch through clouds of a certain thickness as this can cause lighting which could then damage the LV, is that correct? Did I misunderstand? Sorry if this is a rookie question

Correct, specifically if the clouds are of low temperature.

This is called the Thick Cloud Rule
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/05/why-weather-rules-exist/

Thanks so much!
That was a good article, too. I have a vauge recollection of reading somewhere that Apollo 12 experienced a lightning strike (I may have even watched a small part of the Scott Manley video); but I guess I never realized the Saturn V itself started the lighting. That gives a whole new meaning to "bring the thunder!"

Glad they waited a day for this mission

[catdlr]

Launch views from the ground via our member from the Gold Coast area.

[zubenelgenubi]

https://twitter.com/TSKelso/status/1899930311599022090

CelesTrak has GP data for 5 objects from the launch (2025-047) of SPHEREx & PUNCH atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg SFB on Mar 12 at 0310 UTC: https://spacenews.com/falcon-9-launches-nasa-astrophysics-and-heliophysics-missions/. Data for the launch can be found at: https://celestrak.org/NORAD/elements/table.php?INTDES=2025-047.