Watch the Launch

Watch the Launch

Additional Media

SPHEREx and PUNCH Launch

Live coverage of the launch for SPHEREx, the agency’s newest telescope and its rideshare PUNCH, a mission to study the Sun’s solar wind.

SPHEREx Mission

Livestream on X

Watch live: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches NASA's SPHEREx & PUNCH

Watch live coverage as SpaceX launches back-to-back Falcon 9 rockets from both coasts. First up is the launch of two NASA missions: SPHEREx and PUNCH on a rideshare mission. Liftoff from pad 4E at Va...

SpaceX

SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.

SPHEREx & PUNCH

Circle Image

Overview

Destination: Sun-Synchronous Orbit
Mission: Astrophysics

Sun-Synchronous Orbit Space Launch Complex 4E Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA Probability: 90%
B1088 - Landing Zone 4

SPHEREx is a planned two-year astrophysics mission to survey the sky in the near-infrared light, which, though not visible to the human eye, serves as a powerful tool for answering cosmic questions involving the birth of the universe, and the subsequent development of galaxies. It also will search for water and organic molecules – essentials for life as we know it – in regions where stars are born from gas and dust, known as stellar nurseries, as well as disks around stars where new planets could be forming. Astronomers will use the mission to gather data on more than 300 million galaxies, as well as more than 100 million stars in our own Milky Way galaxy. NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission will share a ride to space with SPHEREx. It consists of four suitcase-sized satellites, which will focus on the Sun’s outer atmosphere (the corona) and how it generates the solar wind. The spacecraft also will track coronal mass ejections – large eruptions of solar material that can drive large space weather events near Earth – to better understand their evolution and develop new techniques for predicting such eruptions.

Telemetry

Launch trajectory and telemetry simulations provided by Flight Club - a rocket launch simulator and orbital trajectory visualiser for all things space!

Updates

Cosmic_Penguin • March 12, 2025, 4:59 a.m.

Payload Signal Acquisition confirmed.


Cosmic_Penguin • March 12, 2025, 4:06 a.m.

All spacecraft have separated.


LL2 • March 12, 2025, 3:52 a.m.

Official Webcast by NASA has started


Cosmic_Penguin • March 12, 2025, 3:10 a.m.

Liftoff.


Cosmic_Penguin • March 12, 2025, 2:19 a.m.

Updated launch weather.


Falcon 9

Family:
Configuration: Block 5

Falcon 9 is a two-stage rocket designed and manufactured by SpaceX for the reliable and safe transport of satellites and the Dragon spacecraft into orbit. The Block 5 variant is the fifth major interval aimed at improving upon the ability for rapid reusability.

See Details
Specifications
  • Stages
    2
  • Length
    70.0 m
  • Diameter
    3.65 m
  • Fairing Diameter
    5.2 m
  • Launch Mass
    549.0 T
  • Thrust
    7607.0 kN
Family
  • Name
    Falcon 9
  • Family
  • Variant
    Block 5
  • Alias
  • Full Name
    Falcon 9 Block 5
Payload Capacity
  • Launch Cost
    $52000000
  • Low Earth Orbit
    22800.0 kg
  • Geostationary Transfer Orbit
    8300.0 kg
  • Direct Geostationary
  • Sun-Synchronous Capacity

Booster Info


B1088

Status: Active


Type: Core
Flight Proven: Yes
First Flight: November 30, 2024
Last Flight: August 16, 2026
Flights: 17
Landings Attempted: 18
Landings Successful: 18
Previous B1088 Flights

Landing Information

The Falcon 9 booster B1088 has returned to the launch site at LZ-4 after its 3rd flight.

Result: Successful Return to Launch Site landing at Landing Zone 4.

SpaceX

SpaceX

(SpX)

CEO: Elon Musk Founded: 2002 Successes: 702 Failures: 15 Pending: 127

Agency Type:

Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by entrepreneur Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and enabling the colonization of Mars. SpaceX operates from many pads, on the East Coast of the US they operate from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and historic LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center. They also operate from SLC-4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, usually for polar launches. Another launch site is being developed at Boca Chica, Texas.

INFO WIKI
NASA

NASA’s SPHEREx Observatory Maps Interstellar Ice in Milky Way

An observation made by NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) shows the chemical signatures of water ice (shown in bright blue) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (or…

NASA

‘Interstellar Glaciers’: NASA’s SPHEREx Maps Vast Galactic Ice Regions

NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) mission has mapped interstellar ice at an unprecedented scale. Covering regions in our Milky Way galaxy more than 600 light-years…

NASA

NASA’s SPHEREx Mission Maps Water Ice Throughout Cygnus X

Description An observation made by NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) shows the chemical signatures of water ice (shown in bright blue) and polycyclic aromatic hydr…

NASA

NASA’s SPHEREx Examines Comet 3I/ATLAS’s Coma

Description These observations by NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) show the infrared light emitted by the dust, water, organic molecules, and carbon dioxide contai…

NASA

First Sky Map from NASA’s SPHEREx Observatory

NASA’s SPHEREx Observatory has mapped the entire sky in 102 infrared colors, as seen here in this image released on Dec. 18, 2025. This image features a selection of colors emitted primarily by stars (blue, green, and white), hot hydrogen …

Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA

Space Launch Complex 4E


Long March 12
Success
3 hours, 2 minutes ago
SatNet LEO Group 24
Commercial LC-2 - Wenchang Space Launch Site, People's Republic of China

A batch of 9 Low Earth Orbit communication satellites for the Chinese state owned SatNet constellation operated by the China Satellite Network Group.…


Falcon 9
Deployed
5 hours, 21 minutes ago
USSF-366
Space Launch Complex 4E - Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA

USSF-366 is a classified mission for the United States Space Force. It is possibly a batch of classified LEO satellites for a US government entity ba…


Falcon 9
Success
5 hours, 59 minutes ago
Globalstar 2-R Mission 1 (x 8)
Space Launch Complex 40 - Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA

The Globalstar global mobile communications network offers global, digital real time voice, data and fax services via its Low Earth Orbit satellite c…


Falcon 9
Success
4 days, 2 hours ago
Starlink Group 17-49
Space Launch Complex 4E - Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA

A batch of 24 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.


Falcon 9
Success
4 days, 15 hours ago
Starlink Group 10-19
Space Launch Complex 40 - Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA

A batch of 29 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.


H3-22
Success
5 days, 11 hours ago
Michibiki 7 (QZS-7)
Yoshinobu Launch Complex LP-2 - Tanegashima Space Center, Japan

QZSS (Quasi Zenith Satellite System) is a Japanese satellite navigation system operating from inclined, elliptical geosynchronous orbits to achieve o…


Long March 7A
Failure
5 days, 19 hours ago
ChinaSat 4B
201 - Wenchang Space Launch Site, People's Republic of China

Chinese communication geostationary satellite for unknown purposes.


Falcon 9
Success
1 week ago
Starlink Group 17-38
Space Launch Complex 4E - Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA

A batch of 24 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.


Electron
Success
1 week, 2 days ago
The Grain Goddess Provides (iQPS Launch 7)
Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1A - Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1, Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand

Synthetic aperture radar Earth observation satellite for Japanese Earth imaging company iQPS.


Falcon 9
Success
1 week, 3 days ago
BlueBird 11-13 (Block 2 #6-8)
Space Launch Complex 40 - Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA

AST SpaceMobile’s Block 2 BlueBird satellites are designed to deliver up to 10 times the bandwidth capacity of the BlueBird Block 1 satellites, requi…