Farewell to NEOWISE: NASA’s Asteroid-Hunting Telescope
NASA's NEOWISE mission ended on Aug. 8, 2024, after more than a decade of discovering and tracking near-Earth objects — asteroids and comets that come close to Earth’s orbit. The mission team gathered at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California as the spacecraft received its final command to turn off its transmitter, concluding the mission.
Launched in 2009 as WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer), the space telescope completed its primary mission to conduct an all-sky survey in the infrared spectrum. The spacecraft was put into hibernation in 2011, then re-awakened in 2013 for a second career as NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer).
NEOWISE is expected to re-enter the atmosphere and safely burn up in late 2024.
For more information on NEOWISE, visit: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/neowise For NEOWISE data, visit: https://neowise.ipac.caltech.edu
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC/UCLA; comet NEOWISE image: NASA/Bill Dunford
Transcript
Well, here we are for the NEOWISE end of survey. We are approaching the time where the spacecraft is going to go back into hibernation after many, many years.
NEOWISE has taught us a lot about the small bodies in our solar system, the asteroids and the comets in particular. I like to call this the magic eye puzzle image because there's about 100 asteroids buried in there.
To be associated with the mission at the time that Comet NEOWISE that was discovered, there was a great, great feeling.
Today happens to be the day that we're placing our spacecraft into hibernation mode. The orbit is getting low and it's it's time to be done.
Final power off command. The command has been sent and received by the spacecraft, so everything is completed. We are no longer receiving telemetry data.
Right now our time is 20 to 20. I now declare neowise decommission. What a great mission. What a great team. I can't say enough about this team.
The great contributions to science are going to endure. You've made a permanent contribution to humanity.
It’s that old saying when one door close, another one opens. And that's what we have today.
You're hard at work actually building the follow on mission to NEOWISE, which is called the Near-Earth Object Surveyor Mission, and it’s basically kind of taking the lessons that we learned from NEOWISE and then kind of building a bigger, better, badder version of it when it comes to finding asteroids.