A prolific sky-mapping telescope that has spent more than a year scanning the heavens for asteroids, comets and other cosmic objects received its last command today (Feb. 17).
NASA shut down its WISE spacecraft – short for Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer – at 3:00 p.m. EST (2000 UTC) today. The mission's principal investigator, Ned Wright of the University of California in Los Angeles, sent the final command to the now-hibernating spacecraft, according to an update from the WISE mission's official Twitter account.
"The WISE spacecraft will remain in hibernation without ground contacts awaiting possible future use," NASA officials said via Twitter.
Over the course of its mission, WISE scanned the sky 1 1/2 times, taking about 1.8 million images of asteroids, stars and galaxies. The spacecraft also spotted 19 previously unseen comets and more than 33,500 asteroids, including 120 near-Earth objects, which are objects with orbits that pass relatively close to Earth's own orbit around the sun.
Since the spacecraft and telescope were in good condition prior to mission's end, Wright proposed a three-month extension in order to complete the second half of the observatory's second sky survey. In May 2010, a NASA panel advised against the extension, however, which would have added $6.5 million to the program's price tag.
After WISE's coolant ran out, mission scientists came up with an alternative plan – the NEOWISE mission – to seek out near-Earth asteroids. That mission extension cost substantially less, about $400,000, NASA officials have said
