NEOWISE Telescope

About NEOWISE Telescope: 

• It was launched in 2009 by NASA as the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.
• The space telescope was originally designed to survey the sky in infrared, detecting asteroids, stars and some of the faintest galaxies in space.
• It had completed its primary mission in February 2011.
• Observations resumed in December 2013, when the telescope was taken out of hibernation and re-purposed for the NEOWISE project as an instrument to study near-Earth objects, or NEOs, as well as more distant asteroids and comets.
• It was formerly orbited at an altitude of 310 miles, NEOWISE now sits just 217 miles above Earth’s surface, its descent spurred by increasing solar activity.
• During its primary mission, NEOWISE detected more than 158,000 minor planets, 34,000 of which had never been discovered previously.

Significance of its data: NEOWISE data have been used to set limits on the numbers, orbits, sizes, and probable compositions of asteroids throughout our solar system, and enabled the discovery of the first known Earth Trojan asteroid.

Q1: What is an Asteroid?

Asteroids, sometimes called minor planets, are rocky remnants left over from the early formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.The current known asteroid count is at least 1,351,400.

Source: NASA closes the WISE but aging eyes of an orbiting telescope