NASA's WISE Spacecraft Finishes its Extended Run

摘要

A newly completed NASA survey of space rocks in our solar system revealed 20 new comets, more than 33,000 asteroids, and 134 other near-Earth objects. NASA's NEOWISE mission recently finished the survey, which was a secondary job for the U.S. space agency's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, space telescope. WISE fulfilled its primary goal of photographing the entire sky one-and-a-half times in infrared light last year. The telescope ran out of coolant to keep its electronics chilled in October 2010, but the NEOWISE mission was able to move forward using the two of its four detectors not affected by warmer temperatures.