[meteorite-list] WISE Spacecraft Reactivated to Hunt for Asteroid

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 14:01:01 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201308212101.r7LL11RA014834_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

August 21, 2013

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov

D.C. Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle at jpl.nasa.gov
     
RELEASE 13-263
     
NASA Spacecraft Reactivated to Hunt for Asteroids

Probe Will Assist Agency in Search for Candidates to Explore

A NASA spacecraft that discovered and characterized tens of thousands of
asteroids throughout the solar system before being placed in hibernation will
return to service for three more years starting in September, assisting the
agency in its effort to identify the population of potentially hazardous
near-Earth objects, as well as those suitable for asteroid exploration
missions.

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) will be revived next month
with the goal of discovering and characterizing near-Earth objects (NEOs),
space rocks that can be found orbiting within 45 million kilometers (28
million miles) from Earth's path around the sun. NASA anticipates WISE will
use its 16-inch (40-centimeter) telescope and infrared cameras to discover
about 150 previously unknown NEOs and characterize the size, albedo and
thermal properties of about 2,000 others -- including some of which could be
candidates for the agency's recently announced asteroid initiative.

"The WISE mission achieved its mission's goals and as NEOWISE extended the
science even further in its survey of asteroids. NASA is now extending that
record of success, which will enhance our ability to find potentially
hazardous asteroids, and support the new asteroid initiative," said John
Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science in Washington.
"Reactivating WISE is an excellent example of how we are leveraging existing
capabilities across the agency to achieve our goal."

NASA's asteroid initiative will be the first mission to identify, capture and
relocate an asteroid. It represents an unprecedented technological feat that
will lead to new scientific discoveries and technological capabilities that
will help protect our home planet. The asteroid initiative brings together
the best of NASA's science, technology and human exploration efforts to
achieve President Obama's goal of sending humans to an asteroid by 2025.

Launched December 2009 to look for the glow of celestial heat sources from
asteroids, stars and galaxies, WISE made about 7,500 images every day during
its primary mission from January 2010 to February 2011. As part of a project
called NEOWISE, the spacecraft made the most accurate survey to date of NEOs.
NASA turned most of WISE's electronics off when it completed its primary
mission.

"The data collected by NEOWISE two years ago have proven to be a gold mine
for the discovery and characterization of the NEO population," said Lindley
Johnson, NASA's NEOWISE program executive in Washington. "It is important
that we accumulate as much of this type of data as possible while the WISE
spacecraft remains a viable asset."

Because asteroids reflect but do not emit visible light, infrared sensors are
a powerful tool for discovering, cataloging and understanding the asteroid
population. Depending on an object's reflectivity, or albedo, a small,
light-colored space rock can look the same as a big, dark one. As a result,
data collected with optical telescopes using visible light can be deceiving.

During 2010, NEOWISE observed about 158,000 rocky bodies out of approximately
600,000 known objects. Discoveries included 21 comets, more than 34,000
asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, and 135 near-Earth
objects.

The WISE prime mission was to scan the entire celestial sky in infrared
light. It captured more than 2.7 million images in multiple infrared
wavelengths and cataloged more than 560 million objects in space, ranging
from galaxies faraway to asteroids and comets much closer to Earth.

"The team is ready and after a quick checkout, we're going to hit the ground
running," said Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "NEOWISE not only gives us a better
understanding of the asteroids and comets we study directly, but it will help
us refine our concepts and mission operation plans for future, space-based
near-Earth object cataloging missions."

JPL manages WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's
headquarters in Washington. The mission is part of NASA's Explorers Program,
which NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages. The
Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, built the science instrument. Ball
Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., built the spacecraft.
Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing
and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

More information about NEOWISE is available online at:

http://www.nasa.gov/wise

For more information about the asteroid initiative, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative

-end-
Received on Wed 21 Aug 2013 05:01:01 PM PDT