Construction on NASA mission to map 450 million galaxies is under way

NASA's SPHEREx space telescope is beginning to look much like it will when it arrives in Earth orbit and starts mapping the entire sky. Short for Specto-Photometer for the History of the universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer, SPHEREx resembles a bullhorn, albeit one that will stand almost 8.5 feet tall (2.6 meters) and stretch nearly 10.5 feet (3.2 meters) wide. Giving the observatory its distinctive shape are its cone-shaped photon shields, which are being assembled in a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.