The $488 million Spherex mission aims to explain how galaxies formed and evolved over billions of years, and how the universe expanded so fast in its first moments.

NASA’s newest space telescope, called SPHEREx, finally got off the ground this week, after a series of delays that had stalled its launch since late February. From low-Earth orbit, it will gather data on millions of stars and galaxies—and search for the ingredients of life.

The SPHEREx telescope will create the most colorful map of the cosmos, while the four satellites of the PUNCH mission track the evolution of the solar wind in three dimensions.