Did the Nasa WISE satellite go into space today?
After a coast phase and second stage re-fire, the WISE spacecraft separated from the vehicle and just sent a signal back to Earth by way of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. Launch and mission team members are celebrating at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where a Delta II rocket boosted the spacecraft into orbit at 6:09 a.m. PST (9:09 a.m. EST). With its mission now under way, the 1,485-pound WISE spacecraft will circle Earth over the poles, scanning the entire sky one-and-a-half times in nine months. The mission will uncover hidden cosmic objects, including the coolest stars, dark asteroids and the most luminous galaxies. The Delta II rocket carrying NASA’s WISE spacecraft lifts off. Image above: The United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket with NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite aboard lifts off from Space Launch Complex-2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Image credit: NASA TV Sources:
Platt: A space mission that’s wise about finding asteroids and other space objects. I’m Jane Platt with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Our guest is Dr. Amy Mainzer of JPL, deputy project scientist for NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, scheduled for launch in December. Amy, thanks for joining us, and can you just give us a brief introduction to the WISE infrared mission-what it is and what it will do? Mainzer: Sure, thanks, Jane. It’s great to be here, and WISE is a NASA telescope that’s what we call a medium-class Explorer, so it’s a fairly modest-sized spacecraft, and it contains a relatively small telescope. The telescope is about 40 centimeters in diameter, so that’s basically a smallish size that would kind of fit under your arm. And this small telescope is going to go into orbit around the Earth. With it we will survey the entire sky in four infrared wavelengths. One of the goals of WISE is to basically just complete a census of the en
After a three day delay, NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer this morning blasted into space courtesy of a Delta II rocket and will soon begin bathing the cosmos with infrared light, picking up the glow of hundreds of millions of objects and producing millions of images. The space agency says the WISE spacecraft will circle Earth over the poles, scanning the entire sky one-and-a-half times in nine months. The idea behind the spacecraft is to uncover objects never seen before, including the coolest stars, the universe’s most luminous galaxies and some of the darkest near-Earth asteroids and comets. Sources: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/121409-layer8-nasa-wise-satellite.
