![]() ![]() NEOWISE is the second incarnation of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer ( WISE), an infrared space telescope launched in 2009 to image 99 percent of the sky in the infrared.Īfter being placed in hibernation since completing that mission in 2011, the spacecraft was reactivated in September 2013 as NEOWISE, with the new goal of identifying potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids and comets as well as determining the sizes and compositions of similar, more distant objects.Īlong with the announcement of its latest discoveries, the NEOWISE mission team created and published an animation depicting all findings made during the past year. In September 2013, engineers brought the mission out of hibernation to hunt for more asteroids and comets in a project called NEOWISE. “It is also proving to be an invaluable tool in the refining and perfecting of techniques for near-Earth Object discovery and characterization by a space-based infrared observatory.”Īrtist’s concept of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE spacecraft, in its orbit around Earth. “NEOWISE is not only discovering previously uncharted asteroids and comets, but it is providing excellent data on many of those already in our catalog,” said Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE mission principal investigator from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. In addition to making a plethora of discoveries, NEOWISE also revealed new data about known asteroids and comets. Image & Caption Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/PSIĭuring its third year of operation, NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft discovered 97 hitherto unknown objects in the Solar System, including 28 that are near-Earth objects (NEOs).Īlso, according to data released by the NEOWISE mission team, 64 of the 97 newly identified objects are asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, while five of them are comets. This movie shows the progression of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) investigation for the mission’s first three years following its restart in December 2013.
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