NEOWISE
Context
- NASA’s NEOWISE Asteroid-Hunting Space Telescope Gets Two-Year Mission Extension.
About
- The NEOWISE mission uses a space telescope to hunt for asteroids and comets, including those that could pose a threat to Earth.
- Launched in December 2009 as the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, the space telescope was originally designed to survey the sky in infrared, detecting asteroids, stars and some of the faintest galaxies in space.
- In 2013, the telescope was taken out of hibernation and re-purposed for the NEOWISE project as an instrument to study near-Earth objects, or NEOs, as well as more distant asteroids and comets.
- During its primary mission, NEOWISE detected more than 158,000 minor planets, 34,000 of which had never been discovered previously.
- NEOWISE data have been used to set limits on the numbers, orbits, sizes, and probable compositions of asteroids throughout our solar system, and enabled the discovery of the first known Earth Trojan asteroid.
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