NASA's SPHEREx Observatory Maps Interstellar Ice in Milky Way
Summary: NASA's SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) mission has mapped the chemical signatures of water ice and complex organic molecules across the Milky Way. The observatory, launched in March 2025, captured detailed images of interstellar ice in the Cygnus X star-forming region, revealing where most of the universe's water is formed and stored.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC/Hora et al.
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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 (orange) in Cygnus X, one of the most active and turbulent regions of star birth in our Milky Way galaxy. The image was released on April 15, 2026, along with a study detailing the observation.
One of SPHEREx's main goals is to map the chemical signatures of various types of interstellar ice. This ice includes molecules like water, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide, which are vital to the chemistry that allows life to develop. Researchers believe these ice reservoirs, attached to the surfaces of tiny dust grains, are where most of the universe's water is formed and stored. The water in Earth's oceans—and the ices in comets and on other planets and moons in our galaxy—originates from these regions.
SPHEREx launched on March 11, 2025, and has the unique ability to see the sky in 102 colors, each representing a different wavelength of infrared light that offers distinctive information about galaxies, stars, planet-forming regions, and other cosmic features.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC/Hora et al.