Ball Aerospace to provide support for new NASA mission

BROOMFIELD — Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has been contracted to provide spacecraft and mission integration support for a new NASA mission that seeks to explore the origins of the universe.

The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer mission, known as SPHEREx, will survey millions of galaxies in search of water and organic molecules.

The two-year, $242 million mission is expected to launch in 2023.

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“This amazing mission will be a treasure trove of unique data for astronomers,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a prepared statement. “It will deliver an unprecedented galactic map containing ‘fingerprints’ from the first moments in the universe’s history. And we’ll have new clues to one of the greatest mysteries in science: What made the universe expand so quickly less than a nanosecond after the big bang?”