The SPHEREx All-Sky Infrared Spectral Survey Satellite by Prof. Olivier Dore

About the speaker: Prof Olivier DORÉ is Principal Scientist, Group Supervisor (2015-2019), Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), NASA/Caltech and also Senior Faculty Associate in Theoretical Astrophysics, at Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA), Caltech. He did his PhD from Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris (IAP) In 2001. After that he was Postdoctoral Research Associate in Princeton University (2002-’05) and Canadian Inst. of Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) (2005-’09). Prof. Dore has been awarded several prestigious awards such as JPL Mariner award, Gruber 2012 Cosmology Prize, Gruber 2018 Cosmology Prize, Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics 2018, JPL Explorer award and many more. He is Project Scientist in SPHEREx mission and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope for which he is leading the team focused on cosmology with large scale structures. Other than these two experiments he has been several other missions such as SPIDER, Planck HFI (Core Team), WMAP (2003-2006), Euclid, and the LSST Dark Energy Science Consortium (DESC).

Abstract: SPHEREx, a NASA Medium Explorer (MIDEX) mission scheduled to launch in early 2025, is designed to spectrally survey the entire sky using a small cryogenic wide-field telescope combined with novel (but simple) spectrometers.  SPHEREx will probe the inflationary birth of the universe by studying large-scale structure, complementing surveys optimized to constrain dark energy. SPHEREx will investigate the origin of water and biogenic molecules, locked in interstellar ices in the early phases of planetary system formation. SPHEREx will also chart the origin and history of galaxy formation through a unique mapping method in two deep survey fields. Following in the tradition of all-sky missions such as IRAS, COBE and WISE, SPHEREx will be the first all-sky near-infrared spectral survey.  During its two-year mission, SPHEREx will produce four complete all-sky maps with over a billion detected galaxies, hundreds of millions of high-quality stellar and galactic spectra, and over a million ice absorption spectra, enabling diverse scientific investigations. In this presentation, I will give a mission status and focus on the inflationary science.