A Rochester Institute of Technology professor will be part of a small team of scientists helping to contribute to NASA’s new mission SPHEREx.

Assistant Professor Michael Zemcov will be one of the 19 co-investigators on the mission. The mission will be used to explore the origins of the universe.

Zemcov’s primary role will to help design the instrument and prepare the data pipeline for when the SPHEREx spacecraft begins making observations.

“This is exciting for me, I think,” said Zemcov. “I’ve very interested professionally in this idea of what would have the very early moments of the universe like and what can we learn about them using observations of the earth we’ve found around us today.”

The SPHEREx spacecraft is expected to launch in 2023.