 | NASA to map sky in infrared
~ NASA
Dec. 3, 2009 – From Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Dec. 9, NASA will launch WISE, its newest spacecraft that will map the sky in infrared.
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| Artist's rendering of WISE | |
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THE Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, is in place and ready to roll, according to NASA. The spacecraft is clamped to the top of a rocket above a conical fitting. It will split open like a clamshell five minutes after launch.
WISE will circle the Earth over the poles, scanning the entire sky one-and-a-half times in nine months. The mission will uncover hidden cosmic objects, including the coolest stars, dark asteroids and the most [blue]luminous[/blue] galaxies.
"The eyes of WISE are a vast improvement over those of past infrared surveys," Edward "Ned" Wright, the principal investigator for the mission at UCLA, said in a NASA press release. "We will find millions of objects that have never been seen before."
The mission will map the entire sky at four infrared wavelengths with sensitivity hundreds to hundreds of thousands of times greater than its predecessors. By doing so it will be able to catalog hundreds of millions of objects. The data will serve as navigation charts for other missions, pointing them to the most interesting targets.
NASA's Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, and NASA's upcoming Sofia and James Webb Space Telescope will follow up on WISE finds.
