NASA, SpaceX to launch two new missions on single rocket

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 21 (Xinhua) -- NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than next Friday, Feb. 28, to launch two new missions on one single rocket -- one to study more than 450 million galaxies, and the other to observe the sun's corona, according to a NASA update on Friday.

The SPHEREx mission (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) will improve the understanding of what happened in the first second after the big bang and search for key ingredients for life in human galaxy, according to NASA.

About the size of a subcompact car, SPHEREx will enter a polar orbit around Earth and create a map of the entire sky in 3D, taking images in every direction, like scanning the inside of a globe.

The PUNCH mission (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) will observe the sun's corona as it transitions into the solar wind.

PUNCH is a constellation of four small satellites heading to low Earth orbit that will make global, 3D observations of the sun's corona to learn how the mass and energy there become solar wind, according to NASA.