WISE is expected to find thousands of asteroids, dozens of brown dwarfs and some say maybe a new planet!
NASA’s newest mapping mission, designed to sniff out the dimmest residents of our neighborhood in space, launched successfully this morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The Delta II rocket carrying the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer spacecraft lifted off at 6:09 a.m., Pacific time.
About eight minutes later, the 1,485-pound WISE craft entered space. About 52 minutes into the flight, the craft’s second-stage rocket ignited again, placing the vehicle into its assigned polar orbit 326 miles above the Earth.
Over the next 10 months, the spacecraft will photograph the entire night sky in the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum, finding objects too dim and cool to appear in ordinary light, much as night goggles reveal the faint signatures of warm-blooded creatures that would otherwise be hidden by vegetation or darkness.
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