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. The spacecraft has made years of scientific observations, but with its orbit slowly dropping, it has now been decommissioned and will burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere later this year.
NEOWISE was a remarkable mission for several reasons, one of which was that it was never intended to be an asteroid observation mission at all. It was originally launched as WISE, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, and looked at distant objects like galaxies in the infrared. Its original mission was successful and so was extended, but within a couple of years the spacecraft had used up the coolant required for some of its detectors and it was put into hibernation.
