[meteorite-list] NASA's Spitzer Telescope Celebrates 10 Years in Space

[Ron Baalke]

August 23, 2013

J.D. Harrington
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-5241
j.d.harrington at nasa.gov 

Whitney Clavin
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-4673
whitney.clavin at jpl.nasa.gov 
     
RELEASE 13-262
     
NASA's Spitzer Telescope Celebrates 10 Years in Space

Ten years after a Delta II rocket launched NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope,  
lighting up the night sky over Cape Canaveral, Fla., the fourth of the  
agency's four Great Observatories continues to illuminate the dark side of  
the cosmos with its infrared eyes.

The telescope studied comets and asteroids, counted stars, scrutinized  
planets and galaxies, and discovered soccer-ball shaped carbon spheres in  
space called buckyballs. Moving into its second decade of scientific scouting  
from an Earth-trailing orbit, Spitzer continues to explore the cosmos near  
and far. One additional task is helping NASA observe potential candidates for  
a developing mission to capture, redirect and explore a near-Earth asteroid.

"President Obama's goal of visiting an asteroid by 2025 combines NASA's  
diverse talents in a unified endeavor," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate  
administrator for science in Washington. "Using Spitzer to help us  
characterize asteroids and potential targets for an asteroid mission advances  
both science and exploration."

Spitzer's infrared vision lets it see the far, cold and dusty side of the  
universe. Close to home, the telescope has studied the comet dubbed Tempel 1,  
which was hit by NASA's Deep Impact mission in 2005. Spitzer showed the  
composition of Tempel 1 resembled that of solar systems beyond our own.  
Spitzer also surprised the world by discovering the largest of Saturn's many  
rings. The enormous ring, a wispy band of ice and dust particles, is very  
faint in visible light, but Spitzer's infrared detectors were able to pick up  
the glow from its heat.

Perhaps Spitzer's most astonishing finds came from beyond our solar system.  
The telescope was the first to detect light coming from a planet outside our  
solar system, a feat not in the mission's original design. With Spitzer's  
ongoing studies of these exotic worlds, astronomers have been able to probe  
their composition, dynamics and more, revolutionizing the study of exoplanet  
atmospheres.

Other discoveries and accomplishments of the mission include a complete  
census of forming stars in nearby clouds; a new and improved map of the Milky  
Way's spiral-arm structure; and, with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope,  
discovering that the most distant galaxies known are more massive and mature  
than expected.

"I always knew Spitzer would work, but I had no idea that it would be as  
productive, exciting and long-lived as it has been," said Spitzer project  
scientist Michael Werner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who helped  
conceive the mission. "The spectacular images that it continues to return,  
and its cutting-edge science, go far beyond anything we could have imagined  
when we started on this journey more than 30 years ago."

In October, Spitzer will attempt infrared observations of a small near-Earth  
asteroid named 2009 DB to better determine its size, a study that will assist  
NASA in understanding potential candidates for the agency's asteroid capture  
and redirection mission. This asteroid is one of many candidates the agency  
is evaluating.

Spitzer, originally called the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, was renamed  
after its launch in honor of the late astronomer Lyman Spitzer. Considered  
the father of space telescopes, Lyman Spitzer began campaigning to put  
telescopes in space, away from the blurring effects of the Earth's  
atmosphere, as early as the 1940s. His efforts also led to the development  
and deployment of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, carried to orbit by the  
space shuttle in 1990.

In anticipation of the Hubble launch, NASA set up the Great Observatories  
program to fly a total of four space telescopes designed to cover a range of  
wavelengths: Hubble, Spitzer, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the  
now-defunct Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.

"The majority of our Great Observatory fleet is still up in space, each with  
its unique perspective on the cosmos," said Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division  
director at NASA headquarters in Washington. "The wisdom of having space  
telescopes that cover all wavelengths of light has been borne out by the  
spectacular discoveries made by astronomers around the world using Spitzer  
and the other Great Observatories."

Spitzer ran out of the coolant needed to chill its longer-wavelength  
instruments in 2009, entering the so-called warm mission phase. Now, after  
its tenth year of peeling back the hidden layers of the cosmos, its journey  
continues.

"I get very excited about the serendipitous discoveries in areas we never  
anticipated," said Dave Gallagher, Spitzer's project manager at JPL from 1999  
to 2004, reminding him of a favorite quote from Marcel Proust: "The real  
voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new  
eyes."

For more information about Spitzer, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer 

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