This article is sort of a bittersweet reminder to me because the company that let me go (due to government money concerns), Space Dynamics Laboratory, is the builder of this satellite: the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer or WISE. They want to reactivate it and use it to hunt for rogue asteroids, among other things.
This is a polar, low earth orbiting (LEO), sun-synchronous (explained a little in another post) satellite that, like Hubble, is also looking out into space. All the details are listed here.
This thing sees objects in the universe that are otherwise invisible. The infrared aspect helps with that. And when they talk about wavelengths, they mean the different parts of the infrared spectrum. Each wavelength allows for different types information to be gathered.
WISE has given us all sorts of pictures of the universe and has a great image library here. My favorite is this one:
Related articles
- NASA Reactivates Hibernating Spacecraft WISE to Hunt for Asteroids (scienceworldreport.com)
- Asteroid risk revives telescope (stuff.co.nz)
- NASA Resurrecting Old Space Telescope to Hunt Asteroids (space.com)
- NASA’s Spitzer and WISE telescopes reveal Gargantuan Galaxies slow their growth as they age (clarksvilleonline.com)
The Mad Spaceball 