Mission completed: NASA's Neowise telescope to burn up soon

NASA has ended the mission of the Neowise space telescope after more than ten years. It was deactivated last Thursday, the US space agency announced. Neowise was searching for asteroids and comets that could pose a threat to Earth. The mission ended because the telescope sank too low in its orbit. It is expected to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere at the end of the year.

Neowise stands for Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. The telescope, originally called Wise (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer), was launched into space in December 2009 and initially photographed the sky in four wavelength ranges from 2010. The resulting 2.7 million images were used to catalog more than 560 million celestial bodies.

Second life in planetary defense

After a short rest period , the telescope was then reactivated to look for near-Earth objects that could come dangerously close to the Earth. The infrared cameras proved to be well suited to detecting asteroids. The telescope was part of NASA's planetary defense strategy. As Neowise, it discovered 3,000 near-Earth objects, including 25 new comets , including C/2020 F3 NEOWISE, named after it. According to NASA, a successor called NEO Surveyor is due to start work in 2027 and will track down hard-to-find near-Earth objects. Many of the findings from the Neowise mission have been incorporated into the new telescope.

The mission was terminated because Neowise will soon sink too low in its orbit to provide any useful data. The reason for this is increased solar activity, which heats up the Earth's upper atmosphere and pulls Neowise downwards. However, the spacecraft does not have its own propulsion system to correct its orbit. The scientific work was already completed on July 31. On Thursday, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent the final command to the telescope.

(mki)