NASA has concluded its Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer—a.k.a. NEOWISE—mission after more than a decade of scanning for asteroids and comets in space.
On Thursday, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California sent the last command for NEOWISE to switch off its transmitter, thus decommissioning the survey spacecraft, the space agency said.
NASA launched the space telescope as the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission in December 2009 to scan the infrared sky for seven months.
Under a new name, the agency extended the NEOWISE mission through February 2011 to explore the main belt asteroids before putting the spacecraft into hibernation.
NASA then reactivated the mission in 2013 under the Near-Earth Object Observations Program to survey asteroids and comets, which could be hazardous to Earth.
Throughout its more than 14 years of operation, NEOWISE detected 215 near-Earth objects and discovered 25 new comets, the agency noted.
The decommissioned NEOWISE will continue to drop toward Earth and will safely burn up in the atmosphere in late 2024.
According to Nicola Fox, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, the completed NEOWISE mission paved the way for a next-generation planetary defense telescope—the Near-Earth Object Surveyor.
BAE Systems said the NEO Surveyor is designed to discover and characterize asteroids and comets larger than 460 feet, adding that it will provide the spacecraft, the sunshade system, deployable aperture cover and the cryogenic thermomechanical components for the mission.