NEOWISE: The Legacy of NASA’s Asteroid-Hunting Telescope | NASA/JPL

NEOWISE: The Legacy of NASA’s Asteroid-Hunting Telescope | NASA/JPL

The NEOWISE mission, NASA’s asteroid-hunting space telescope, is retiring in summer 2024 after over a decade of discovering, tracking, and characterizing near-Earth objects (NEOs)—asteroids and comets that come close to Earth’s orbit. Without a propulsion system to boost its orbit, NEOWISE, short for Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up in the coming months. In this video, mission leaders explain how NEOWISE has vastly improved our understanding of the solar system, better prepared us to predict potential impact events, and paved the way for a new mission: NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor.

Originally launched in 2009 as the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the telescope completed its primary mission to conduct an all-sky survey in the infrared spectrum. The spacecraft detected asteroids, stars, and examples of the faintest galaxies in space. It was then put into hibernation in 2011. NASA re-awakened it in 2013, launching its second career and giving rise to its modified name, NEOWISE. On Aug. 8, 2024, mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will send a command to once again put the spacecraft into hibernation before its re-entry, expected in late 2024 or early 2025.

For more information on the NEOWISE mission, visit: science.nasa.gov/mission/neowise

For NEOWISE data, visit: neowise.ipac.caltech.edu

Credit: 

NASA/JPL-Caltech; WISE-NEOWISE movies compiled by Dan Caselden; WISE imagery: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA; Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/Judy Schmidt; 10 years of NEOWISE data animation: IPAC/Caltech/University of Arizona; select asteroid animations from NASA Eyes on Asteroids; asteroid 2014 HQ124 radar imagery: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arecibo Observatory/USRA/NSF; Orion Nebula: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech; International Space Station footage: NASA Johnson Space Center; comet NEOWISE images: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Lab/Parker Solar Probe/Brendan Gallagher, and NASA/Bill Dunford

Duration: 3 minutes

Release Date: Aug. 1, 2024

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