The $488 million Spherex mission aims to explain how galaxies formed and evolved over billions of years, and how the universe expanded so fast in its first moments.

NASA and SpaceX successfully launched their SPHEREx and PUNCH missions into orbit Tuesday night from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, to "collect" data on the sun and millions of galaxies.

The SPHEREx telescope will create the most colorful map of the cosmos, while the four satellites of the PUNCH mission track the evolution of the solar wind in three dimensions.