NASA’s satellite Neowise, which was being used as a “planetary defence mission” to track asteroids and comets which can prove threatening to Earth, will be crashing into our atmosphere.
Neowise (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) was on the hunt for dangerous celestial bodies for a decade but after it fell too low into the orbit of Earth, NASA engineers had to send the final command to the satellite.
NASA chiefs said that Neowise will soon fall too low in Earth’s orbit to prove the required scientific data, however, since there is an “uptick in solar activity” which means that the upper atmosphere of Earth will be heated and expanded to the point.
Here’s how NASA sent the final command to NEOWISE
The space agency’s officials gathered at its Jet Propulsion Lab in California and sent the final command to NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) to turn off its transmitter after remaining in operation for nearly 15 years as technicians worked to retrieve the remaining data.
“The NEOWISE mission has been an extraordinary success story as it helped us better understand our place in the universe by tracking asteroids and comets that could be hazardous for us on Earth,” said Nicola Fox, who is an associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, in a statement.
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“While we are sad to see this brave mission come to an end, we are excited for the future scientific discoveries it has opened by setting the foundation for the next generation planetary defence telescope,” she said.
In December 2009, NEOWISE was launched with a different name and it had a different mission.
Earlier, it was called WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) and its work was to scan the entire infrared sky in the span of a seven-month prime mission.
It did so “with far greater sensitivity than previous surveys,” said NASA officials in the statement.
(With inputs from agencies)