Fifteen years after a launch that was intended to begin just a seven-month mission, NASA's NEOWISE spacecraft has finally shut down.
Fifteen years after a launch that was intended to begin just a seven month mission, NASA’s NEOWISE spacecraft has finally shut down. The Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer spacecraft surveyed the sky spotting thousands of asteroids within our solar system, and made discoveries such as a striking comet that as named after it.
Recommended Videos Years later, in 2013, NASA wanted a mission to look for asteroids and comets that come close to Earth, called near-Earth objects. Scientists realized that WISE could be reactivated for this job, using its remaining detectors. The mission was reactivated as NEOWISE, and since then has taken images of the sky, including 1.45 million measurements of more than 44,000 solar system objects.
The final image taken by NEOWISE shows the night sky as seen in the direction of the Fornax constellation. It was images like these that allowed scientists to spot previously unseen objects, which could then be flagged for follow-up observations from telescopes on the ground to see how these objects were moving and to work out their orbits — and whether they could pose any threat to Earth.
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