New Delhi: NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft has reentered the atmosphere and disintegrated because of the extreme friction. The spacecraft was retired by NASA in August, and was expected to reenter the atmosphere of the Earth by the end of the year, concluding the mission. NEOWISE was launched in 2011 as the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), and was originally designed to conduct an infrared survey of the skies, detecting asteroids, stars and the faintest galaxies. The primary mission was completed in 2011, after which the spacecraft ran out of coolant for its sensitive infrared detectors.
NASA however, decided to continue the mission, without the coolant, and brought the spacecraft out of hibernation in 2013. The spacecraft was then tasked with discovering asteroids in the solar system, including those that can potentially strike the Earth in the future. During this extended mission, NEOWISE discovered 34,000 minor planets, and tracked a total of 158,000 small solar system bodies. The data has been used by scientists to estimate the distribution and composition of asteroids throughout the solar system. NEOWISE also discovered the first dark asteroids, which are comets that have lost their outer layers, leaving behind a core that was once icy.
Citizen Science Project
In fact, NEOWISE has captured so much data that scientists and computers cannot process all the information on their own. Because of this, scientists are taking help from the general public. The data gathered by NEOWISE is expected to continue driving the discovery of asteroids outside the solar system, stars with circumstellar discs, and any worlds lurking undetected in the outer solar system. All of these projects are available on the Zooniverse platform. The NEOWISE spacecraft has gathered data on trillions of astronomical sources, which are expected to take at least a few more years to process. Although the spacecraft has burned up in the atmosphere, the scientific discoveries are expected to continue.
