[meteorite-list] WISE Spacecraft Warming Up

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:29:46 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201008111929.o7BJTkCi005505_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-263

WISE Spacecraft Warming Up
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
August 10, 2010

Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer Mission Status

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, is warming up. Team
members say the spacecraft is running out of the frozen coolant needed
to keep its heat-sensitive instrument chilled.

The telescope has two coolant tanks that keep the spacecraft's normal
operating temperature at 12 Kelvin (minus 438 degrees Fahrenheit). The
outer, secondary tank is now depleted, causing the temperature to
increase. One of WISE's infrared detectors, the longest-wavelength band
most sensitive to heat, stopped producing useful data once the telescope
warmed to 31 Kelvin (minus 404 degrees Fahrenheit). The primary tank
still has a healthy supply of coolant, and data quality from the
remaining infrared detectors remains high.

WISE completed its primary mission, a full scan of the entire sky in
infrared light, on July 17, 2010. The mission has taken more than 1.5
million snapshots so far, uncovering hundreds of millions of objects,
including asteroids, stars and galaxies. It has discovered more than
29,000 new asteroids to date, more than 100 near-Earth objects and 15
comets.

WISE is continuing a second survey of about one-half the sky as
originally planned. It's possible the remaining coolant will run out
before that scan is finished. Scientists say the second scan will help
identify new and nearby objects, as well as those that have changed in
brightness. It could also help to confirm oddball objects picked up in
the first scan.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the
Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate, Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is
at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers
Program, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The
science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan,
Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies
Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place
at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and
http://wise.astro.ucla.edu .
Received on Wed 11 Aug 2010 03:29:46 PM PDT