NASA shuts down down asteroid-hunting NEOWISE telescope as the sun drags it to its doom

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NASA ’s only blank telescope dedicate to planetary defense has turn off its transmitter for the last clip , ending its 15 - twelvemonth calling observe near - Earthasteroidsand comet .

The spacecraft — name NEOWISE ( Near - Earth Object panoptic - field of operations Infrared Survey Explorer ) — vastly outlast its original seven - month mission to read the sky for infrared signal . It ultimately observe more than 200 previously unknown near - Earth objects , admit 25 newcomets , and provided a wealth of information on 44,000 other objects that soar upwards through oursolar scheme , according to NASA .

This artist concept shows the NASA WISE spacecraft, in its orbit around Earth

An artist’s concept of NASA’s asteroids-hunting NEOWISE satellite, which was decommissioned for good this week.

NEOWISE ’s missionary post , which formally ended on July 31 , is finally fall to an conclusion as the sun ’s geological era of peak bodily function , calledsolar maximum , menace to drag the satellite into Earth ’s ambiance for a final , fiery reentry . The spacecraft , which lack propellent to thrust itself into a higher sphere , has been steady falling toward Earth for twelvemonth and is expected to safely burn up in the standard atmosphere in late 2024 .

" This scope has really survive its original [ lifespan],“Amy Mainzer , a professor at the University of California , Los Angeles and principal investigator for both NEOWISE and its planned successor , NEO Surveyor , told Live Science in an interview last yr . " We got so much more out of it than we were expecting to get . "

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In this illustration showing NEO Surveyor, NASA’s next-generation near-Earth object hunter, the spacecraft floats in an infrared starfield containing stars, star clusters, gas, and dust. More than 100 asteroids can be seen as red dots, with some of them visible in a track that shows how they were captured at different times as they marched across the sky.

NEO Surveyor, planned for launch no sooner than 2027, will continue the asteroid-hunting work of NEOWISE.

Retirement and rebirth

NEOWISE launched in 2009 as simply WISE , the Wide - field Infrared Survey Explorer . Like a archetypical version of theJames Webb Space Telescope , WISE participate orbit with a missionary post to represent the integral sky ininfraredlight , look for trace of faint and ancient emissions from the former cosmos .

Its original seven - month delegation showed that WISE was far more sensitive than scientists had expected . NASA then expand the charge under the name NEOWISE to last until 2011 , so the telescope could survey the master asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter . The scope was then put into hibernation after running out of coolant , which kept the spacecraft ’s heat from leaching into NEOWISE ’s infrared sensors and reducing their sensitivity .

Still , later analysis of the telescope ’s data exhibit it was still open of detecting nearbysolar systemobjects that reflect sunshine . Thus , NEOWISE was brought out of hibernation in 2013 to continue its survey of near - Earth objects for another ten .

an illustration of the Gaia space telescope with the Milky Way in the background

Among the hundreds of object the telescope discovered , its most famous detection is the bright comet that brook its name : comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE , which zoomed past Earth in July 2020 .

A gap in the skies

The demise of NEOWISE go forth a temporary planetary defense gap in Earth ’s electron orbit . No other NASA blank space telescope devotes 100 % of its clock time to hunting for near - Earth objects , some of which could pose a danger to our planet .

However , an even more powerful infrared scope call NEO Surveyor is already in the works to continue NEOWISE ’s foreign mission , with a planned launch appointment of no preferably than 2027 . Once deployed , NEO Surveyor will complete a full scan of the sky every two weeks , Mainzer said . A purpose - ramp up solar subtlety will also leave the telescope to hunt forasteroids turn up near the glower of the sun — a region of blank that ’s consider our great planetary defense blind spot .

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an illustration of a large asteroid approaching Earth

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In the meantime , scientists will swear on brawny ground - based observatories to verify no pesky near - Earth asteroids sneak up on us .

an illustration of a large asteroid approaching earth

" We ’ll have the ground based telescopes , and these days they regain the majority of the objects anyway , " Mainzer said . " Catalina Sky Survey [ in Arizona ] and Pan - STARRS [ in Hawaii ] are the two surveys that are discovering the largest number of physical object mightily now , and that ’s been that fashion for a foresightful clock time . "

With the help of surveys like these , stargazer have mapped the orbits of more than 34,000 near - Earth asteroids , harmonize to NASA — and none pose a threat to Earth for at least the next 100 years .

An illustration of three asteroids heading towards Earth.