Nasa’s new Spherex telescope lifts off to map cosmos in unprecedented detail

The $488m Spherex mission aims to explain how galaxies evolved over billions of years

Nasa's newest space telescope rocketed into orbit on Tuesday to map the entire sky like never before - a sweeping look at hundreds of millions of galaxies and their shared cosmic glow since the beginning of time.

SpaceX launched the Spherex observatory from California, putting it on course to fly over Earth's poles. Tagging along were four suitcase-size satellites to study the sun. Spherex popped off the rocket's upper stage first, drifting into the blackness of space with a blue Earth in the background.