The images are a milestone for NASA's first mission dedicated to the hunt for near-Earth objects (NEOs) from space. In addition to discovering additional NEOs, the telescope will help refine estimates of the hazards presented by objects already discovered via optical telescopes. Beyond its immediate objectives, the mission is serving as training wheels for a more ambitious mission, NEOCAM, that a team is preparing to propose to NASA.
NASA recently released initial images from NEOWISE. The team, led by Amy Mainzer, is pleased with the results. "The image quality looks excellent," says Dr. Mainzer, who is also leading the NEOCAM effort. "It looks pretty much like we left it about 31 months ago." That's when NASA put the craft to sleep when its initial mission ended.
All-sky catalog
NEOWISE launched in 2009 as NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The exquisitely sensitive telescope spent about six months building an all-sky catalog of objects ranging from brown dwarfs to distant galaxies. NASA's James Web Space Telescope, currently slated for launch in 2018, and other observatories will use the catalog to pick targets for detailed observation.
By end of September 2010, however, the craft had exhausted the coolant that helped the infrared detectors reach the sensitivity needed to build the catalog. Within a month, NASA opted to extended the mission through February 2011 to see how the craft, with warmer detectors, worked as an NEO observatory.
During both phases of the craft's initial mission, it observed more than 158,000 asteroids. Of those, it discovered some 35,000 objects; 135 were NEOs. It picked up 155 comets, including 21 new ones.
Importantly, during the craft's warm phase, the team observed 6,500 asteroids in the main asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter, as well as 88 NEOs, according to a study the researchers published in November 2012 in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
To know more about NEOWISE, click here.
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