Satellites come in all shapes and sizes, but there aren't any that look quite like SPHEREx, an infrared observatory NASA launched Tuesday night in search of answers to simmering questions about how the Universe, and ultimately life, came to be.

NASA's newest space telescope has blasted off to map the entire sky. The 'Spherex Observatory' infrared instruments are expected to provide a sweeping, wide-angle view of hundreds of millions of galaxies and their shared cosmic glow.