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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s SPHEREx, which will map millions of galaxies across the entire sky, captured one of its first exposures March 27. The observatory’s six detectors each captured one of these uncalibrated images, to which visible-light colors have been added to represent infrared wavelengths. SPHEREx’s complete field of view spans the top three images; the same area of the sky is also captured in the bottom three images. NASA/JPL-Caltech Processed with rainbow hues to represent a range of infrared wavelengths, the new pictures indicate the astrophysics space observatory is working as expected.
NASA’s SPHEREx (short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) has turned on its detectors for the first time in space. Initial images from the observatory, which launched March 11, confirm that all systems are working as expected.
Although the new images are uncalibrated and not yet ready to use for science, they give a tantalizing look at SPHEREx’s wide view of the sky. Each bright spot is a source of light, like a star or galaxy, and each image is expected to contain more than 100,000 detected sources.
There are six images in every SPHEREx exposure — one for each detector. The top three images show the same area of sky as the bottom three images. This is the observatory’s full field of view, a rectangular area about 20 times wider than the full Moon. When SPHEREx begins routine science operations in late April, it will take approximately 600 exposures every day.
Each image in this uncalibrated SPHEREx exposure contains about 100,000 light sources, including stars and galaxies. The two insets at right zoom in on sections of one image, showcasing the telescope’s ability to capture faint, distant galaxies. These sections are processed in grayscale rather than visible-light color for ease of viewing.NASA/JPL-Caltech “Our spacecraft has opened its eyes on the universe,” said Olivier Doré, SPHEREx project scientist at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in Southern California. “It’s performing just as it was designed to.”
The SPHEREx observatory detects infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye. To make these first images, science team members assigned a visible color to every infrared wavelength captured by the observatory. Each of the six SPHEREx detectors has 17 unique wavelength bands, for a total of 102 hues in every six-image exposure.
Breaking down color this way can reveal the composition of an object or the distance to a galaxy. With that data, scientists can study topics ranging from the physics that governed the universe less than a second after its birth to the origins of water in our galaxy.
“This is the high point of spacecraft checkout; it’s the thing we wait for,” said Beth Fabinsky, SPHEREx deputy project manager at JPL. “There’s still work to do, but this is the big payoff. And wow! Just wow!”
During the past two weeks, scientists and engineers at JPL, which manages the mission for NASA, have executed a series of spacecraft checks that show all is well so far. In addition, SPHEREx’s detectors and other hardware have been cooling down to their final temperature of around minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit (about minus 210 degrees Celsius). This is necessary because heat can overwhelm the telescope’s ability to detect infrared light, which is sometimes called heat radiation. The new images also show that the telescope is focused correctly. Focusing is done entirely before launch and cannot be adjusted in space.
“Based on the images we are seeing, we can now say that the instrument team nailed it,” said Jamie Bock, SPHEREx’s principal investigator at Caltech and JPL.
How It Works
Where telescopes like NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes were designed to target small areas of space in detail, SPHEREx is a survey telescope and takes a broad view. Combining its results with those of targeted telescopes will give scientists a more robust understanding of our universe.
The observatory will map the entire celestial sky four times during its two-year prime mission. Using a technique called spectroscopy, SPHEREx will collect the light from hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies in more wavelengths any other all-sky survey telescope.
Track the real-time location of NASA’s SPHEREx space observatory using the agency’s 3D visualization tool, Eyes on the Solar System. When light enters SPHEREx’s telescope, it’s directed down two paths that each lead to a row of three detectors. The observatory’s detectors are like eyes, and set on top of them are color filters, which are like color-tinted glasses. While a standard color filter blocks all wavelengths but one, like yellow- or rose-tinted glasses, the SPHEREx filters are more like rainbow-tinted glasses: The wavelengths they block change gradually from the top of the filter to the bottom.
“I’m rendered speechless,” said Jim Fanson, SPHEREx project manager at JPL. “There was an incredible human effort to make this possible, and our engineering team did an amazing job getting us to this point.”
More About SPHEREx
The SPHEREx mission is managed by 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. Caltech managed and integrated the instrument. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech. 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. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
For more about SPHEREx, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/spherex/
News Media Contact
Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-808-2469
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Apr 01, 2025 Related Terms
SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe and Ices Explorer) Astrophysics Galaxies Origin & Evolution of the Universe The Search for Life The Universe Explore More
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The Friant-Kern Canal supports water management in California’s San Joaquin Valley. A new airborne campaign is using NASA radar technology to understand how snowmelt replenishes groundwater in the area. Credits:
Bureau of Reclamation Where California’s towering Sierra Nevada surrender to the sprawling San Joaquin Valley, a high-stakes detective story is unfolding. The culprit isn’t a person but a process: the mysterious journey of snowmelt as it travels underground to replenish depleted groundwater reserves.
The investigator is a NASA jet equipped with radar technology so sensitive it can detect ground movements thinner than a nickel. The work could unlock solutions to one of the American West’s most pressing water challenges — preventing groundwater supplies from running dry.
“NASA’s technology has the potential to give us unprecedented precision in measuring where snowmelt is recharging groundwater,” said Erin Urquhart, program manager for NASA’s Earth Action Water Resources program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This information is vital for farmers, water managers, and policymakers trying to make the best possible decisions to protect water supplies for agriculture and communities.”
Tracking Water Beneath the Surface
In late February, a NASA aircraft equipped with Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) conducted the first of six flights planned for this year, passing over a roughly 25-mile stretch of the Tulare Basin in the San Joaquin Valley, where foothills meet farmland. It’s a zone experts think holds a key to maintaining water supplies for one of America’s most productive agricultural regions.
Much of the San Joaquin Valley’s groundwater comes from the melting of Sierra Nevada snow. “For generations, we’ve been managing water in California without truly knowing where that meltwater seeps underground and replenishes groundwater,” said Stanford University geophysicist and professor Rosemary Knight, who is leading the research.
This image from the MODIS instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite, captured on March 8, 2025, shows the Tulare Basin area in Southern California, where foothills meet farmlands. The region is a crucial area for groundwater recharge efforts aimed at making the most of the state’s water resources. Credits: NASA Earth Observatory image by Michala Garrison, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. The process is largely invisible — moisture filtering through rock and sediment, and vanishing beneath orchards and fields. But as the liquid moves downhill, it follows a pattern. Water flows into rivers and streams, some of it eventually seeping underground at the valley’s edge or as the waterways spread into the valley. As the water moves through the ground, it can create slight pressure that in turn pushes the surface upward. The movement is imperceptible to the human eye, but NASA’s advanced radar technology can detect it.
“Synthetic aperture radar doesn’t directly see water,” explained Yunling Lou, who leads the UAVSAR program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “We’re measuring changes in surface elevation — smaller than a centimeter — that tell us where the water is.”
These surface bulges create what Knight calls an “InSAR recharge signature.” By tracking how these surface bulges migrate from the mountains into the valley, the team hopes to pinpoint where groundwater replenishment occurs and, ultimately, quantify the amount of water naturally recharging the system.
Previous research using satellite-based InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) has shown that land in the San Joaquin Valley uplifts and subsides with the seasons, as the groundwater is replenished by Sierra snowmelt. But the satellite radar couldn’t uniquely identify the recharge paths. Knight’s team combined the satellite data with images of underground sediments, acquired using an airborne electromagnetic system, and was able to map the major hidden subsurface water pathways responsible for aquifer recharge.
NASA’s airborne UAVSAR system will provide even more detailed data, potentially allowing researchers to have a clearer view of where and how fast water is soaking back into the ground and recharging the depleted aquifers.
In 2025, NASA’s UAVSAR system on a Gulfstream-III jet (shown over a desert landscape) is conducting six planned advanced radar surveys to map how and where groundwater is recharging parts of California’s southern San Joaquin Valley. Credits: NASA Supporting Farmers and Communities
California’s Central Valley produces over a third of America’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts. The southern portion of this agricultural powerhouse is the San Joaquin Valley, where most farming operations rely heavily on groundwater, especially during drought years.
Water managers have occasionally been forced to impose restrictions on groundwater pumping as aquifer levels drop. Some farmers now drill increasingly deeper wells, driving up costs and depleting reserves.
“Knowing where recharge is happening is vital for smart water management,” said Aaron Fukuda, general manager of the Tulare Irrigation District, a water management agency in Tulare County that oversees irrigation and groundwater recharge projects.
“In dry years, when we get limited opportunities, we can direct flood releases to areas that recharge efficiently, avoiding places where water would just evaporate or take too long to soak in,” Fukuda said. “In wetter years, like 2023, it’s even more crucial — we need to move water into the ground as quickly as possible to prevent flooding and maximize the amount absorbed.”
NASA’s Expanding Role in Water Monitoring
NASA’s ongoing work to monitor and manage Earth’s water combines a range of cutting-edge technologies that complement one another, each contributing unique insights into the challenges of groundwater management.
The upcoming NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission, a joint project between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) set to launch in coming months, will provide global-scale radar data to track land and ice surface changes — including signatures of groundwater movement — every 12 days.
The NISAR satellite (shown in this artist’s concept) has a large radar antenna designed to monitor Earth’s land and ice changes with unprecedented detail. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech In parallel, the GRACE satellites — operated by the German Aerospace Center, German Research Centre for Geosciences, and NASA — have transformed global groundwater monitoring by detecting tiny variations in Earth’s gravity, offering a broad view of monthly water storage changes across large regions.
The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment and Follow-On (GRACE and GRACE-FO) missions have helped expose major declines in aquifers, including in California’s Central Valley. But their coarser resolution calls for complementary tools that can, for example, pinpoint recharge hotspots with greater precision.
Together, these technologies form a powerful suite of tools that bridge the gap between regional-scale monitoring and localized water management. NASA’s Western Water Applications Office (WWAO) also plays a key role in ensuring that this wealth of data is accessible to water managers and others, offering platforms like the Visualization of In-situ and Remotely-Sensed Groundwater Observation (VIRGO) dashboard to facilitate informed decision-making.
“Airborne campaigns like this one in the San Joaquin test how our technology can deliver tangible benefits to American communities,” said Stephanie Granger, WWAO’s director at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We partner with local water managers to evaluate tools that have the potential to strengthen water supplies across the Western United States.”
By Emily DeMarco
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Last Updated Mar 20, 2025 Related Terms
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