After more than a decade of dedicated service, NASA’s NEOWISE spacecraft has officially retired. Launched in 2009 as WISE, its original task was to map the entire sky in infrared, which it accomplished with ease. Later, NEOWISE adapted and learned new skills to find asteroids and comets that could potentially threaten Earth.
As NEOWISE’s orbit around Earth began to decay, making it harder to do its job, NASA decided it was time to let it rest. The spacecraft will eventually burn up in our planet’s atmosphere by late 2024. During its time on the job, NEOWISE achieved much more than expected – discovering over 3,000 near-Earth objects and making over 1.45 million infrared measurements of other celestial bodies.
NEOWISE even found 25 new comets, including the famous comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE, which many of us got to see streaking across the night sky in 2020. Though NEOWISE has retired, its work will live on as a valuable resource for scientists. The data it collected will continue to be used for years to come. NEOWISE also helped lay the groundwork for its successor, NEO Surveyor, which is set to launch in 2027 and continue the mission of protecting Earth from space hazards.
Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/nasa-bids-farewell-to-decade-old-space-guardian-that-protected-earth-from-asteroids-comets-440959-2024-08-10