WISE Infrared Telescope to Find Millions of Unknown Objects

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), due to be launched December 9 at 9:09 a.m. EST, is ready for it’s roll-out to the launch pad. The satellite is designed for polar orbit around the Earth, to search the sky for 9 months for hidden cosmic objects, such as very cool stars known as "brown dwarfs", dark asteroids and the most luminous galaxies.

"The eyes of WISE are a vast improvement over those of past infrared surveys," Edward Wright, mission principal investigator, said. "We will find millions of objects that have never been seen before."

According to NASA, the satellite will scan the entire sky at four infrared wavelengths; it has a sensitivity hundreds of thousands of times greater than its predecessors, cataloging hundreds of millions of objects. The data is expected to be used as navigation charts for other missions, like NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, the ESA's Herschel Space Observatory and NASA's upcoming Sofia and James Webb space telescope. The WISE project is being managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"This is an exciting time for space telescopes," said NASA's Astrophysics Division director Jon Morse. "Many of the telescopes will work together, each contributing different pieces to some of the most intriguing puzzles in our universe."

WISE is chilled to bring it's operating temperature down to minus 445 degrees F, or 8 Kelvin; this is so that it will not give off any infrared light of it's own, enabling it to capture infrared images others have missed. The satellite has two tanks of frozen hydrogen surrounding it's scientific instruments.