NASA's young telescope sniffed water and methane on 37 'failed stars'

NASA's SPHEREx telescope only launched in 2025, and it's already mapping the skies. It measured water, methane, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide across 37 brown dwarfs — objects too small to be stars, too big to be planets — spanning a wild temperature range from 2,200°C to minus 20°C. Published in The Astrophysical Journal, it's the first broad chemistry benchmark for these in-between worlds, and with thousands more brown dwarfs queued up, the map keeps growing.