NASA’s space telescope NEOWISE has been hunting for comets and asteroids for the last decade. In that time, it’s helped strengthen Earth’s planetary defence efforts and discovered more than 3,000 near-Earth objects, among numerous other achievements. The space agency is now celebrating its tenth anniversary with… the announcement of its impending fiery death.
“The mission has planned for this day a long time,” says Joseph Masiero, NEOWISE’s deputy principal investigator and a scientist at Caltech, in a recent statement on its unavoidable demise. Scientists knew this was coming due to the sun’s 11-year activity cycle, AKA the ebb and flow of events like solar storms and coronal mass ejections.
Right now, the sun is “waking back up” after several years of calm, says Masiero. This will eventually cause NEOWISE to fall out of its orbit, as activity like solar flares heat up our atmosphere and make it expand, with the atmospheric gases then increasing drag on orbiting satellites and causing them to slow down.
“We are at the mercy of solar activity,” Masiero adds. “And with no means to keep us in orbit, NEOWISE is now slowly spiralling back to Earth.” Here on the planet’s surface, there’s no reason to worry about the telescope falling out of the sky, since it’s set to burn up in the atmosphere. However, this will mean saying goodbye to a project with a storied history of spotting once-in-a-lifetime comets and potentially hazardous asteroids.
First launched as WISE (or the “Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer”) in 2009, the telescope was initially designed to map the sky in infrared light, honing in on distant stars and galaxies as well as rogue space rocks. In 2010, though, it ran out of a vital coolant. NASA decided to repurpose it to focus on near-Earth objects (hence its new name, the “Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer” or NEOWISE) before sending it into hibernation in 2011.
NEOWISE got yet another chance in 2013, however, when it was woken from its slumber to aid in planetary defence and – quite possibly – avert any apocalyptic asteroid impacts. It’s now estimated that it will become completely unusable due to solar activity by sometime in 2025. RIP NEOWISE, you were a real one x