“The NEOWISE mission has been an extraordinary success story as it helped us better understand our place in the universe by tracking asteroids and comets that could be hazardous for us on Earth,” Nicola Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement on Thursday.
“While we are sad to see this brave mission come to an end, we are excited for the future scientific discoveries it has opened by setting the foundation for the next generation planetary defense telescope,” she added.
NEOWISE launched in December 2009 with a different name and a different mission. Originally called WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer), the probe scanned the entire infrared sky over the course of a seven-month prime mission. It did so “with far greater sensitivity than previous surveys,” NASA officials wrote in the same statement.
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