WISE Telescope Jettisons Cover

Scientists at the American space agency announce that their newest telescope, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), managed to successfully jettison its lens cover. The maneuver was the last big step in the commissioning and testing phases of the mission. Now, experts will spend the next few weeks calibrating the instruments aboard the observatory, and ensuring that everything is working according to specifications. According to sources at NASA, the “first light” image from WISE is expected within a month, Space Fellowship reports.

“The cover floated away as we planned. Our detectors are soaking up starlight for the first time,” the WISE mission manager, William Irace, says. He is based at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California. The lab is managed by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). “It’s wonderful to end the year with open WISE eyes. Now we can synch WISE up to our scan mirror and get on with the business of exploring the infrared Universe,” Peter Eisenhardt, also at the JPL, adds. He is a member of the project's science team. Full-scale science operations are scheduled to begin in mid-January, 2010, the experts add.

The pyrotechnic charge that let loose the lens cover was detonated at 2:30 pm PST (5:30 pm PST) yesterday, December 29, and mission managers reported that everything went without a hitch. The hard cover had to be installed on the telescope so as to ensure that no debris entered the detectors during launch, and also because experts didn't want the sensitive instruments to be exposed to stray light. Now, more than two weeks after its December 14 launch from the Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB), in California, WISE is finally ready to take in infrared light.

The lens cap hides the 40-centimeter telescope and its four infrared detectors. The cryostat cooling the instruments is planned to reach a temperature lower than 190 Kelvin (-83 degrees Celsius, or -117 degrees Fahrenheit). The lens was necessary because unplanned pointing at the Earth or the Sun would have decreased the cryostat's life span.

On December 15, WISE managed to acquire the Sun's position, and aligned its solar panel accordingly. Engineers are currently preparing the satellite's instruments for the months of missions ahead. According to experts, the spacecraft is scheduled to scan the Universe in highly detailed photos in the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Several hundred million objects will be surveyed during this time, they add, and the advanced optical systems on WISE will ensure that one of the most complex and detailed maps of the infrared Cosmos is produced.

JPL manages WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, in Washington DC. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is based at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program, which is managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland.