New NASA Craft, With Infrared Power, Will Map The Unseen Sky

Guillermo J. Torraca Santiago

After twelve years of work, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, also known as NASA, is planning to launch their new spacecraft, known as Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) into orbit on December 10, 2009. This launch is going to take place at the Vandenberg Air Force Base, located in California. WISE is an infrared satellite that is specially designed to map the skies in the form of infrared, or heat radiation, which is basically the type of radiation of light for most of the stars and other objects that surround our universe. These wavelengths can not penetrate our atmosphere, since they are very far from Earth, which makes it invisible to our eyes. In 1983, this problem was resolved, when the Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS), an infrared spacecraft with a 62-pixel camera, was launched in space. Now, the 4 million pixels WISE is going to replace IRAS, and is expected to bring newer infrared sources, such as brown dwarfs, ultra luminous galaxies, and other objects, like near-Earth asteroids that may cause future harm to our planet. This 320 million-dollar craft, equipped with infrared detectors and a 16-inch telescope has the capacity of not only mapping the entire sky every six months, but it also has the ability to be hundreds of times more sensitive than IRAS. Finally, Dr. Edward Wright, principal investigator for WISE said: “If we don’t find something totally unexpected, I’ll be surprised”.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/science/space/08wise.html?_r=1&ref=science