After passing all the necessary checks and calibrations, NASA says its SPHEREx space observatory is ready to embark on its expansive mission. As of May 1, the spacecraft has begun imaging a 3D map of the entire sky and its hundreds of millions of galaxies. This set of six images is referred to as an exposure, with about 600 exposures produced by SPHEREx per day. While other projects like COBE have previously mapped the whole sky, SPHEREx is the first to do it across so many color spectrums. Using spectroscopy, the observatory splits light across 102 infrared wavelengths that are invisible to the human eye.