[meteorite-list] NEOWISE Spacecraft Data Available to Public

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4524

NASA Asteroid Hunter Spacecraft Data Available to Public
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
March 26, 2015

Millions of images of celestial objects, including asteroids, observed 
by NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) 
spacecraft now are available online to the public. The data was collected 
following the restart of the asteroid-seeking spacecraft in December 2013 
after a lengthy hibernation.

The collection of millions of infrared images and billions of infrared 
measurements of asteroids, stars, galaxies and quasars spans data obtained 
between December 13, 2013, and December 13, 2014.

"One of the most satisfying things about releasing these cutting-edge 
astronomical data to the public is seeing what other exciting and creative 
projects the scientific community does with them," said Amy Mainzer, principal 
investigator for NEOWISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in 
Pasadena, California.

In the first year of the survey, NEOWISE captured 2.5 million image sets, 
detecting and providing data on over 10,000 solar system objects. The 
data revealed 129 new solar system objects, including 39 previously undiscovered 
near-Earth objects. Each of the images also contains a multitude of background 
stars, nebulae and galaxies. More than 10 billion measurements of these 
more distant objects are contained in the release of the NEOWISE data.

"And we're far from finished," said Mainzer. "We're only into our second 
year of additional science collection, and we've already added another 
21 new discoveries including six new near-Earth objects."

NEOWISE is a space telescope that scans the skies for asteroids and comets. 
The telescope sees infrared light, which allows it to pick up the heat 
signature of asteroids and obtain better estimates of their true sizes. 
As a result, NEOWISE can see dark asteroids that are harder for visible-light 
surveys to find. Nearly all of the NEOWISE discoveries have been large 
-- hundreds of yards, or meters, wide -- and very dark, similar to printer 
toner. When NEOWISE's infrared data on an object is combined with that 
of a visible-light optical telescope, it helps scientists understand the 
object's composition.

NEOWISE always looks in the dawn and twilight skies -- the direction perpendicular 
to a line between Earth and the sun. This unique vantage point makes it 
possible for NEOWISE to spot objects that approach Earth from the direction 
of the sun, unlike ground-based telescopes that are only able to view 
the night sky.

Originally called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the 
spacecraft was placed in hibernation in 2011 after its primary mission 
was completed. In September 2013, it was reactivated, renamed NEOWISE 
and assigned a new mission to assist NASA's efforts to identify the population 
of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects and help characterize previously 
known asteroids and comets. It provides information about the sizes and 
compositions of these objects.

NASA Wednesday announced more details in its plan for its Asteroid Redirect 
Mission (ARM), which in the mid-2020s will test a number of new capabilities 
needed for future human expeditions to deep space, including to Mars. 
For ARM, a robotic spacecraft will capture a boulder from the surface 
of a near-Earth asteroid and move it into a stable orbit around the moon 
for exploration by astronauts, all in support of advancing the nation's 
journey to Mars. The agency plans to announce the specific asteroid selected 
for the mission no earlier than 2019, approximately a year before launching 
the robotic spacecraft.

NASA also announced it has increased the detection of near-Earth Asteroids 
by 65 percent since launching its asteroid initiative three years ago.

"NEOWISE is a vital asset in NASA's program to find objects that truly 
represent an impact hazard to Earth," said Lindley Johnson, program executive 
for the Near-Earth Object Observation Program at NASA Headquarters in 
Washington. "The data reveal how far we've come to understand the danger 
to Earth but it will still take a concerted effort to find all of them 
that could do serious damage."

In 2012, the president's NASA budget included, and Congress authorized, 
$20.4 million for an expanded NASA Near-Earth Object (NEO) Observations 
Program, increasing the resources for this critical program from the $4 
million per year it had received since the 1990s. The program was again 
expanded in fiscal year 2014, with a budget of $40.5 million. NASA is 
asking Congress for $50 million for this important work in the 2016 budget.

JPL manages the NEOWISE mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate 
in Washington. The Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, built the 
science instrument. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colorado, 
built the spacecraft. Science operations and data processing take place 
at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute 
of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

To view the NEOWISE data, visit:

http://wise2.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/release/neowise/

For more information about NEOWISE, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/neowise

More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects is at available 
online at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch

For more information about the Asteroid Redirect Mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative


Media Contact

DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle at jpl.nasa.gov 

Dwayne Brown
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov 

2015-101