WASHINGTON, March 26, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --
Millions of images of celestial objects, including asteroids,
observed by NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer
(NEOWISE) spacecraft now are available online to the public. The
data was collected following the restart of the asteroid-seeking
spacecraft in December 2013 after a
lengthy hibernation.
The collection of millions of infrared images and billions of
infrared measurements of asteroids, stars, galaxies and quasars
spans data obtained between December 13,
2013, and December 13,
2014.
"One of the most satisfying things about releasing these
cutting-edge astronomical data to the public is seeing what other
exciting and creative projects the scientific community does with
them," said Amy Mainzer, principal
investigator for NEOWISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL),
in Pasadena, California.
In the first year of the survey, NEOWISE captured 2.5 million
image sets, detecting and providing data on over 10,000 solar
system objects. The data revealed 129 new solar system objects,
including 39 previously undiscovered near-Earth objects. Each of
the images also contains a multitude of background stars, nebulae
and galaxies. More than 10 billion measurements of these more
distant objects are contained in the release of the NEOWISE
data.
"And we're far from finished," said Mainzer. "We're only into
our second year of additional science collection, and we've already
added another 21 new discoveries including six new near-Earth
objects."
NEOWISE is a space telescope that scans the skies for asteroids
and comets. The telescope sees infrared light, which allows it to
pick up the heat signature of asteroids and obtain better estimates
of their true sizes. As a result, NEOWISE can see dark asteroids
that are harder for visible-light surveys to find. Nearly all of
the NEOWISE discoveries have been large --hundreds of yards, or
meters, wide-- and very dark, similar to printer toner. When
NEOWISE's infrared data on an object is combined with that of a
visible-light optical telescope, it helps scientists understand the
object's composition.
NEOWISE always looks in the dawn and twilight skies – the
direction perpendicular to a line between Earth and the sun. This
unique vantage point makes it possible for NEOWISE to spot objects
that approach Earth from the direction of the sun, unlike
ground-based telescopes that are only able to view the night
sky.
Originally called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer
(WISE), the spacecraft was placed in hibernation in 2011 after its
primary mission was completed. In September
2013, it was reactivated, renamed NEOWISE and assigned a new
mission to assist NASA's efforts to identify the population of
potentially hazardous near-Earth objects and help characterize
previously known asteroids and comets to provide information about
their sizes and compositions.
NASA Wednesday announced more details in its plan for its
Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), which in the mid-2020s will test a
number of new capabilities needed for future human expeditions to
deep space, including to Mars. For ARM, a robotic spacecraft
will capture a boulder from the surface of a near-Earth asteroid
and move it into a stable orbit around the moon for exploration by
astronauts, all in support of advancing the nation's journey to
Mars. The agency plans to announce the specific asteroid selected
for the mission no earlier than 2019, approximately a year before
launching the robotic spacecraft.
NASA also announced it has increased the detection of near-Earth
Asteroids by 65 percent since launching its asteroid initiative
three years ago.
"NEOWISE is a vital asset in NASA's program to find objects that
truly represent an impact hazard to Earth," said Lindley Johnson, program executive for the
Near-Earth Object Observation Program at NASA Headquarters in
Washington. "The data reveals how
far we've come to understand the danger to Earth but it will still
take a concerted effort to find all of them that could do serious
damage."
In 2012, the president's NASA budget included, and Congress
authorized, $20.4 million for an
expanded NASA Near-Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program,
increasing the resources for this critical program from the
$4 million per year it had received
since the 1990s. The program was again expanded in fiscal year
2014, with a budget of $40.5 million.
NASA is asking Congress for $50
million for this important work in the 2016 budget.
JPL manages the NEOWISE mission for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate in Washington. The
Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan,
Utah, built the science instrument. Ball Aerospace &
Technologies Corp. of Boulder,
Colorado, built the spacecraft. Science operations and data
processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis
Center at the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena.
Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
To view the NEOWISE data, visit:
http://wise2.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/release/neowise/
For more information about NEOWISE, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/neowise
More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects is at
available online at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch
For more information about the Asteroid Redirect Mission,
visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative
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SOURCE NASA