‘Interstellar Glaciers’: NASA’s SPHEREx Maps Vast Galactic Ice Regions
15 Apr 2026, 15:02 GMT
By Stephen Carney
Topic: SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe and Ices Explorer)
Source URL: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/spherex/interstellar-glaciers-nasas-spherex-maps-vast-galactic-ice-regions/
NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer) mission has mapped interstellar ice at an unprecedented scale. Covering regions in our Milky Way galaxy more than 600 light-years across, the ice was found inside giant molecular clouds — vast regions of gas and dust where dense clumps of