NASA to Reactivate Successful WISE Telescope

NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, John Grunsfeld, announced that NASA would reactivate the WISE Telescope in September.

“The WISE mission achieved its mission’s goals and as NEOWISE extended the science even further in its survey of asteroids. NASA is now extending that record of success, which will enhance our ability to find potentially hazardous asteroids, and support the new asteroid initiative."

Lindley Johnson, NASA’s NEOWISE program executive, added, “The data collected by NEOWISE two years ago have proven to be a gold mine for the discovery and characterization of the NEO population. It is important that we accumulate as much of this type of data as possible while the WISE spacecraft remains a viable asset.”

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is an infrared-wavelength astronomical space telescope that active from December 2009 to February 2011. In October 2010, NASA extended the original WISE mission with a program called Near-Earth Object WISE (NEOWISE).his was extended an three additional months because it was very successful. Its new mission was to look for asteroids and comets close to Earth orbit. NEOWISE discovered many new objects in the Solar System, including 20 comets. before it was put into hibernation on February 1, 2011.