WASHINGTON, Aug. 8, 2024
/PRNewswire/ -- Engineers on NASA's NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object
Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) mission commanded the
spacecraft to turn its transmitter off for the last time Thursday.
This concludes more than 10 years of its planetary defense mission
to search for asteroids and comets, including those that could pose
a threat to Earth.
The final command was sent from the Earth Orbiting Missions
Operation Center at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Southern California, with mission
members past and present in attendance alongside officials from the
agency's headquarters in Washington. NASA's Tracking and Data Relay
Satellite System then relayed the signal to NEOWISE,
decommissioning the spacecraft. As NASA previously shared, the
spacecraft's science survey ended on July
31, and all remaining science data was downlinked from the
spacecraft.
"The NEOWISE mission has been an extraordinary success story as
it helped us better understand our place in the universe by
tracking asteroids and comets that could be hazardous for us on
Earth," said Nicola Fox, associate
administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.
"While we are sad to see this brave mission come to an end, we are
excited for the future scientific discoveries it has opened by
setting the foundation for the next generation planetary defense
telescope."
NASA ended the mission because NEOWISE will soon drop too low in
its orbit around Earth to provide usable science data. An uptick in
solar activity is heating the upper atmosphere, causing it to
expand and create drag on the spacecraft, which does not have a
propulsion system to keep it in orbit. Now decommissioned, NEOWISE
is expected to safely burn up in our planet's atmosphere in late
2024.
During its operational lifetime, the infrared survey telescope
exceeded scientific objectives for not one but two missions,
starting with the WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer)
mission. Managed by JPL, WISE launched in December 2009 with a seven-month mission to scan
the entire infrared sky. By July
2010, WISE had accomplished this with far greater
sensitivity than previous surveys. A few months later, the
telescope ran out of the coolant that kept heat produced by the
spacecraft from interfering with its infrared observations.
(Invisible to the human eye, infrared wavelengths are associated
with heat.)
NASA extended the mission under the name NEOWISE until
February 2011 to complete a survey of
the main belt asteroids, at which point the spacecraft was put into
hibernation. Analysis of this data showed that although the lack of
coolant meant the space telescope could no longer observe the
faintest infrared objects in the universe, it could still make
precise observations of asteroids and comets that generate a strong
infrared signal from being heated by the Sun as they travel past
our planet.
NASA brought the telescope out of hibernation in 2013 under the
Near-Earth Object Observations Program, a precursor for the
agency's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, to continue the
NEOWISE survey of asteroids and comets in the pursuit of planetary
defense.
"The NEOWISE mission has been instrumental in our quest to map
the skies and understand the near-Earth environment. Its huge
number of discoveries have expanded our knowledge of asteroids and
comets, while also boosting our nation's planetary defense," said
Laurie Leshin, director, NASA JPL.
"As we bid farewell to NEOWISE, we also celebrate the team behind
it for their impressive achievements."
By repeatedly observing the sky from low Earth orbit, NEOWISE
created all-sky maps featuring 1.45 million infrared measurements
of more than 44,000 solar system objects. Of the 3,000-plus
near-Earth objects it detected, 215 were first spotted by NEOWISE.
The mission also discovered 25 new comets, including the famed
comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE that streaked across the night sky in the
summer of 2020.
In addition to leaving behind a trove of science data, the
spacecraft has helped inform the development of NASA's first
infrared space telescope purpose-built for detecting near-Earth
objects: NEO Surveyor.
"The NEOWISE mission has provided a unique, long-duration data
set of the infrared sky that will be used by scientists for decades
to come," said Amy Mainzer,
principal investigator for both NEOWISE and NEO Surveyor at the
University of California, Los Angeles.
"But its additional legacy is that it has helped lay the groundwork
for NASA's next planetary defense infrared space telescope."
Also managed by JPL, NEO Surveyor will seek out some of the
hardest-to-find near-Earth objects, such as dark asteroids and
comets that don't reflect much visible light, as well as objects
that approach Earth from the direction of the Sun. The
next-generation infrared space telescope will greatly enhance the
capabilities of the international planetary defense community,
which includes NASA-funded ground surveys. Construction of NEO
Surveyor is already well under way, with a launch date set for no
earlier than 2027.
More Mission Information
The NEOWISE and NEO Surveyor
missions support the objectives of NASA's Planetary Defense
Coordination Office at the agency's headquarters. The NASA
Authorization Act of 2005 directed NASA to discover and
characterize at least 90% of the near-Earth objects more than 460
feet (140 meters) across that come within 30 million miles (48
million kilometers) of our planet's orbit. Objects of this size can
cause significant regional damage, or worse, should they impact the
Earth.
NASA JPL manages and operates the NEOWISE mission for the
agency's Planetary Defense Coordination Office within the Science
Mission Directorate. The Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, built the science instrument. BAE
Systems of Boulder, Colorado,
built the spacecraft. Science data processing, archiving, and
distribution is done at IPAC at Caltech in Pasadena, California. Caltech manages JPL for
NASA.
To learn more about NEOWISE, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/neowise
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SOURCE NASA
