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"Build it and infrared surprises will come" JET PROPULSION LABORATORY NEWS RELEASE Posted: October 23, 2006 Engineers are rolling up their sleeves in preparation for building a telescope that will find the nearest star-like objects and the brightest galaxies. NASA has approved the start of construction on a new mission called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which will scan the entire sky in infrared light.
An estimated $300-million mission, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or "Wise," has been in the planning stages for the past eight years. It is scheduled to launch into an Earth orbit in late 2009. It will spend seven months collecting data. Such extensive sky coverage means the mission will find and catalogue all sorts of celestial eccentrics. These may include brown dwarfs, or failed stars, that are closer to Earth than Proxima Centauri, the nearest star other than our sun. Brown dwarfs are balls of gas that begin life like stars but lack the mass to ignite their internal fires and light up like normal stars. They do, however, produce warm infrared glows that Wise will be able to see. "Brown dwarfs are lurking all around us," said Dr. Peter Eisenhardt, project scientist for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We believe there are more brown dwarfs than stars in the nearby universe, but we haven't found many of them because they are too faint in visible light." Wright, Eisenhardt and other scientists recently identified brown dwarfs using NASA's infrared Spitzer Space Telescope. Wise will vastly expand the search, uncovering those brown dwarfs closest to Earth that might make ideal targets for future planet-hunting missions. Recent Spitzer findings support the notion that planets might orbit brown dwarfs. Wise might also find the most luminous galaxies in the universe, some so far away that their light has taken 11.5 billion years to reach Earth. Galaxies in the distant, or early, universe were much brighter than our own Milky Way galaxy, but dust thought to exist in these objects blocks much of their ultraviolet and visible light. These dusty coats light up at infrared wavelengths; however, the galaxies are few and far between, so they can be difficult to find. Wise will comb the whole sky in search of them. "It's hard to find the most energetic galaxies if you don't know where to look," said Eisenhardt. "We're going to look everywhere." The spacecraft's detectors will be approximately 500 times more sensitive than those of a previous infrared survey mission, called the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, a joint European-NASA venture that operated in 1983. JPL manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate and Explorer Program. The Explorer Program is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The infrared cryogenic instrument for Wise will be designed and built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft will be built by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation in Boulder, Colo. Mission operations will be conducted at JPL, and images will be processed and distributed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The Center for Science Education at the University of California, Berkeley, Space Sciences Laboratory, will manage the Wise education program. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. |
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Some of the initial pictures and data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter since the craft entered its mapping orbit around the Red Planet are presented in this news briefing held October 16 from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The three-man Expedition 14 crew of the International Space Station complete a short trip, flying their Soyuz capsule to another docking port in preparation for receiving a resupply ship.
Space shuttle Discovery's STS-39 flight, launched in April 1991, served as a research mission for the U.S. Department of Defense. An instrument-laden spacecraft for the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization was released to watch Discovery perform countless rocket firings and maneuvers, as well as canisters releasing clouds of gas. The crew tells the story of the mission in this post-flight film presentation.
Seeking to study explosive forces across the universe, the Gamma Ray Observatory was launched aboard shuttle Atlantis in April 1991. But when the craft's communications antenna failed to unfold, spacewalking astronauts ventured outside the shuttle to save the day. The rescue EVA was followed by a planned spacewalk to test new equipment and techniques. The crew of STS-37 narrate this post-flight mission film.
Dazzling images from Mars are revealed by scientists. The robotic rover Opportunity has reached the massive Victoria crater with its steep cliffs and layers of rock exposing the planet's geologic history. Meanwhile, the new Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has photographed the rover and its surroundings from high above.
n this news conference from NASA Headquarters, scientists announce the Hubble Space Telescope's discovery of 16 extrasolar planet candidates orbiting a variety of distant stars in the central region of our Milky Way galaxy. Five of the newly found planets represent a new extreme type of planet not found in any nearby searches.