W.I.S.E. satellite now in orbit

[Prophet]

Nasa's WISE satellite (wide-field infrared survey explorer) was successfully launched yesterday and will begin mapping the entire sky shortly. The WISE satellite focus will be looking for near earth asteroids (the ones that might end up hitting us) as well as peering into the galactic core. Others hope that it will find the dozens of brown dwarf stars that are theorized to be within 25 light years of us, perhaps one may even be closer than proxima centauri.

[BlakeG228]

any updates on this? what about live feed?

[Aury]

Maybe it will confirm is there is cak- I mean, domina!

[Ttech]

I thought it was already in orbit.

Wolfy: Only if we can get the chat going again. Its kinda quiet there

[bimbel]

As far as I know the primary mission goal was already achieved in june or july (a map of the whole sky). Currently it should do the secondary mission (scanning everything again to see differences)

[Prophet]

The onboard supply of coolant is now gone, signalling the end of W.I.S.E.'s primary mission. It has taken over 1.8 million photos covering the entire sky 1.5 times.

This news release from Oct. 4th summarizes the achievements thus far.

To date, WISE has discovered 19 comets and more than 33,500 asteroids, including 120 near-Earth objects, which are those bodies with orbits that pass relatively close to Earth's path around the sun. More discoveries regarding objects outside our solar system, such as the brown dwarfs and luminous galaxies, are expected.

Full article

In addition, NASA has released a photo of a brown dwarf.
(It's the tiny green dot near the center.)


NASA will be releasing some of the photos and data this spring, with the remaining photos and data a year later.