NASA's newest space telescope reached orbit Tuesday to map the entire sky in a way never done before. SpaceX launched the SPHEREX observatory from California, set to fly over Earth's poles, carrying four suitcase-sized satellites to study the sun.

The $488 million SPHEREX mission aims to figure out how galaxies formed and evolved over billions of years and how the universe expanded so quickly in its earliest moments. Near our own Milky Way galaxy, SPHEREX will look for water and other elements of life in icy clouds between stars where new solar systems are emerging.

The cone-shaped SPHEREX — weighing 1,110 pounds (500 kilograms), or about as heavy as a grand piano — will take six months to map the entire sky with its infrared eyes and wide field of view. Four full-sky surveys are planned over two years, as the telescope circles the globe from pole to pole at 400 miles (650 kilometers) up.

How will Spherex work?

SPHEREX will not be able to see galaxies in as much detail as NASA's larger and more elaborate Hubble and Webb space telescopes with their narrow fields of view. Instead of counting or focusing on individual galaxies, SPHEREX will observe the total brightness produced by entire clusters, including the earliest galaxies that formed after the Big Bang that created the universe.

"This cosmic glow captures all the light emitted in cosmic history," said mission chief scientist Jamie Bock of the California Institute of Technology. "It's a very different way of looking at the universe," allowing scientists to see what sources of light may have been missed in the past.

we will know about the beginning of the universe

By looking at the collective brightness, scientists hope to tease out the light from the earliest galaxies and learn how they formed, Bock said. “We won't be able to see the Big Bang. But we will see its aftermath and thus learn about the beginning of the universe.”

The telescope's infrared detectors will be able to recognize 102 colors invisible to the human eye, providing the most colorful, inclusive map of the universe ever created. Beth Fabinski, deputy project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said it's "like looking at the universe through rainbow-colored glasses."