Astronomers could not only rely on the mission to seek out these objects, but also use its data to figure out their size and albedo – how much sunlight their surfaces reflect – and to gather clues about the minerals and rocks they’re composed of.
“NEOWISE has showcased the importance of having an infrared space survey telescope as part of NASA’s planetary defense strategy while also keeping tabs on other objects in the solar system and beyond,” said Amy Mainzer, the mission’s principal investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Mainzer is also leading NASA’s upcoming , which will build on NEOWISE’s legacy. The next-generation infrared space telescope will seek out some of the hardest-to-find near-Earth objects, such as dark asteroids and comets that don’t reflect much visible light, as well as objects that approach Earth from the direction of the Sun. Scheduled for launch in 2027, the JPL-managed mission will also search for objects known as Earth Trojans – asteroids that lead or trail our planet’s orbit – the first of which in 2011.
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Comet NEOWISE and Beyond
Since becoming NEOWISE, the mission has scanned the entire sky over 20 times and made 1.45 million infrared measurements of over 44,000 solar system objects. That includes more than 3,000 near-Earth objects, 215 of which NEOWISE discovered. Data from the mission has contributed to refining the orbits of these objects while gauging their size as well.
Its forte is characterizing near-Earth asteroids. In 2021, NEOWISE became a key component of an that focused on the hazardous asteroid Apophis.
The mission has also discovered 25 comets, including the long-period comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE). The comet became a visible in the Northern Hemisphere for several weeks in 2020 and the first comet that could be seen by the naked eye since 2007, when was primarily visible in the Southern Hemisphere.
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Future researchers will continue to rely on the vast archive of NEOWISE observations to make new discoveries, similar to the way data from 2010 long after the observations were made to characterize asteroid Dinkinesh in support of NASA’s before its October 2023 encounter.
“This is a bittersweet moment. It’s sad to see this trailblazing mission come to an end, but we know there’s more treasure hiding in the survey data,” said Masiero. “NEOWISE has a vast archive, covering a very long period of time, that will inevitably advance the science of the infrared universe long after the spacecraft is gone.”
More About the Mission
NEOWISE and NEO Surveyor support the objectives of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office () at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The NASA Authorization Act of 2005 directed NASA to discover and characterize at least 90% of the near-Earth objects more than 140 meters (460 feet) across that come within 30 million miles (48 million kilometers) of our planet’s orbit. Objects of this size can cause significant regional damage, or worse, should they impact the Earth.
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JPL manages and operates the NEOWISE mission for PDCO within the Science Mission Directorate. The Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, built the science instrument. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Science data processing takes place at IPAC at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
For more information about NEOWISE, visit:
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