Talk:SPHEREx

A story about the precursor missions before SPHEREx

I would like many people to know that the development of the science and instruments for the SPHEREx mission is based on the NASA sounding rocket program CIBER and CIBER-2 experiments, which were conducted as an international collaboration between the United States, Japan, and South Korea. Furthermore, the observations of the cosmic infrared background radiation conducted by SPHEREx and CIBER/CIBER-2 can be traced back to rocket experiments carried out in the 1990s by ISAS (now JAXA/ISAS), in collaboration with the group led by Toshio Matsumoto at Nagoya University, Paul Richards at UC Berkeley, and Andrew Lange (at the time). These efforts evolved into Japan’s IRTS space infrared telescope. The CIBER and CIBER-2 experiments were led by Jamie Bock and Shuji Matsuura, who had been trained in the ISAS rocket experiments under the guidance of Matsumoto and his team, and ultimately paved the way for SPHEREx. While Japanese groups played a major role in these experiments, it is a rather ironic twist of history that Japan is not participating in SPHEREx. Stories like this tend to be forgotten, but I believe it is important to properly understand history and situate current missions within that context, which is why I have written this to share it with you all. ~2026-18248-38 (talk) 05:33, 24 March 2026 (UTC)