Posted on by Matt Williams

NASA’s Says Goodbye to its Asteroid-Hunting NEOWISE Mission

NEOWISE
NEOWISE on the hunt. Credit: NASA/JPL

NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), launched in 2009, spent the next fourteen and half years studying the Universe in infrared wavelengths. During that time, it discovered thousands of minor planets, star clusters, and the first Brown Dwarf and Earth-Trojan asteroid. By 2013, the mission was reactivated by NASA as the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), which was tasked with searching for Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs). For ten years, the NEOWISE mission faithfully cataloged comets and asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth someday.

Unfortunately, NASA announced on July 1st that it would be decommissioning this planetary defense mission, which is expected to burn up in our atmosphere later this year. On Thursday, August 8th, the mission was decommissioned after the final command was sent from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and related to the spacecraft by the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) system. However, the scientific data NEOWISE collected during its ten years of operation will continue to inspire new discoveries!

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Posted on by Laurence Tognetti

JWST Detects Carbon Dioxide in a Centaur for the First Time

Centaurs are small planetary bodies that orbit between Jupiter and Neptune and have baffled astronomers for sharing characteristics with both asteroids and comets. Centaurs got their name after the mythical half-horse, half-human creatures called centaurs due to their dual characteristics. Above is an artist's illustration displaying a centaur creature among asteroids (left) and comets (right). (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

A study published today in The Planetary Science Journal examines how NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has conducted a first-time detection of carbon dioxide in a Centaur, this one designated 39P/Oterma. A Centaur is a small planetary body that orbits between Jupiter and Neptune and frequently crosses the orbits of one or more of the gas giant planets within our solar system. While no Centaur has been imaged up-close, they typically exhibit a combination of attributes between comets and asteroids. While carbon monoxide has been detected in two known centaurs, this recent discovery could mark a turning point in how scientists understand the formation, evolution, and composition of not only Centaurs, but of the early solar system, as well.

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