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NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope Ends Mission of Astronomical Discovery After more
than 16 years studying the universe in infrared light, revealing new wonders in
our solar system, our galaxy and beyond, NASA's Spitzer
Space Telescope's mission
has come to an end.
Mission
engineers confirmed at about 2:30
p.m. PDT (5:30 p.m. EDT) Thursday the spacecraft was placed in safe
mode, ceasing all science operations. After the decommissioning was confirmed, Spitzer
Project Manager Joseph Hunt declared the mission had officially ended.
Launched in
2003, Spitzer was one of NASA's four Great Observatories, along with the Hubble
Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Compton Gamma Ray
Observatory. The Great Observatories program demonstrated the power of using
different wavelengths of light to create a fuller picture of the universe.
"Spitzer
has taught us about entirely new aspects of the cosmos and taken us many steps
further in understanding how the universe works, addressing questions about our
origins, and whether or not are we alone," said Thomas Zurbuchen,
associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
"This Great Observatory has also identified some important and new
questions and tantalizing objects for further study, mapping a path for future investigations
to follow. Its immense impact on science certainly will last well beyond the
end of its mission."
Among its
many scientific contributions, Spitzer studied comets and asteroids in our own solar system and found a
previously unidentified ring around Saturn. It studied star and planet formation,
the evolution of galaxies from the ancient universe to today, and the composition of interstellar dust. It also proved
to be a powerful tool for detecting exoplanets and characterizing their atmospheres. Spitzer's best-known work may be detecting
the seven Earth-size planets in the TRAPPIST-1
system - the largest number
of terrestrial planets ever found orbiting a single star - and determining
their masses and densities.
In
2016,following a review of operating
astrophysics missions,NASA made a
decision to close out the Spitzer mission in 2018 in anticipation of the launch
of the James Webb Space Telescope, which also will observe the universe in
infrared light. When Webb's
launch was postponed, Spitzer was granted an
extension to continue operations until this year. This gave Spitzer additional
time to continue producing transformative science, including insights that
will pave the way for Webb, which is scheduled to launch in 2021.
At the time of launch, the Spitzer Space Telescope bore its original name: the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF). It's shown here in the mobile service tower on Launch
Credit: NASA
Full image and caption
"Everyone
who has worked on this mission should be extremely proud today," Hunt said.
"There are literally hundreds of people who contributed directly to
Spitzer's success, and thousands who used its scientific capabilities to
explore the universe. We leave behind a powerful scientific and technological
legacy."
Keeping Cool
Though it was
not NASA's first space-based infrared telescope, Spitzer was the most sensitive
infrared telescope in history when it launched, and it delivered a deeper and
more far-reaching view of the infrared cosmos than its predecessors. Above
Earth's atmosphere, Spitzer could detect some wavelengths that cannot be
observed from the ground. The spacecraft's Earth-trailing orbit placed it far
away from our planet's infrared emissions, which also gave Spitzer better
sensitivity than was possible for larger telescopes on Earth.
Spitzer's prime
mission came to an end in 2009, when the telescope exhausted its supply of the liquid
helium coolant necessary for operating two of its three instruments - the
Infrared Spectrograph and Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer (MIPS). The
mission was deemed a success, having achieved all of its primary science
objectives and more. But Spitzer's story wasn't over. Engineers and scientists
were able to keep the mission going using only two out of four wavelength
channels on the third instrument, the Infrared Array Camera. Despite increasing engineering and operations
challenges, Spitzer
continued to produce transformational science for another 10 1/2 years - far
longer than mission planners anticipated.
During its
extended mission, Spitzer continued to make significant scientific discoveries.
In 2014, it detected evidence of asteroid collisions in a newly formed planetary system, providing
evidence that such smash-ups might be common in early solar systems and crucial
to the formation of some planets. In 2016, Spitzer worked with Hubble to image
the most distant galaxy ever detected. From 2016 onward, Spitzer studied the TRAPPIST-1 system for more
than 1,000 hours. All of
Spitzer's data are free and available to the public in the Spitzer data archive. Mission scientists say they expect
researchers to continue making discoveries with Spitzer long after the
spacecraft's decommissioning.
"I think
that Spitzer is an example of the very best that people can achieve," said
Spitzer Project Scientist Michael Werner. "I feel very fortunate to have
worked on this mission, and to have seen the ingenuity, doggedness and
brilliance that people on the team showed. When you tap into those things and
empower people to use them, then truly incredible things will happen."
NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, conducts mission
operations and manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for the agency's Science Mission
Directorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer
Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena. Spacecraft operations are based at
Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared
Science Archive housed at IPAC at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale, California, built
the Spitzer spacecraft, and during development served as lead for systems and
engineering, and integration and testing. Ball Aerospace and Technologies
Corporation in Boulder, Colorado provided the optics, cryogenics and thermal
shells and shields for Spitzer.
Ball developed the Infrared Spectrograph (IRS)
instrument, with science leadership based at Cornell University, and the
Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer (MIPS) instrument, with science
leadership based at the University of Arizona in Tucson. NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, developed the Infrared Array Camera
(IRAC) instrument, with science leadership based at the Harvard Smithsonian Astrophysics
Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
View some of
the amazing images showcasing some of Spitzer's greatest discoveries at:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7221
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