NASA's SPHEREx mission spots 3I/ATLAS's bright envelope
NASA's Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) was built for the ambitious purpose of performing an all-sky survey. The data it collects from more than 450 million galaxies and 100 million stars in the Milky Way over its two-year mission will help scientists explore the origins of the universe and its evolution over time. But that doesn't mean scientists can't occasionally take a break from investigating the deepest cosmological mysteries to take a peek at an interstellar object (ISO), right?