Asteroid-Hunting Telescope Mission Built by Space Dynamics Lab Ends

NASA's NEOWISE mission, a crucial initiative in detecting near-Earth objects, marked a significant milestone on Aug. 8 when the spacecraft received its final command, concluding its mission.

Utah State University's Space Dynamics Laboratory built the space-based telescope and provided mission operations support at its North Logan, Utah, facilities. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California managed and operated the NEOWISE mission for the agency's Planetary Defense Coordination Office at NASA Headquarters.

SDL played a vital role in designing, building, testing and calibrating the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, science instrument. Following delivery of the payload, SDL also supported instrument-spacecraft integration as well as pre-launch and on-orbit operations. WISE launched in December 2009 to survey the sky in infrared light. Its primary mission was to detect and catalog stars, galaxies and other cosmic phenomena.

After mapping the entire sky twice, WISE successfully completed its primary mission in 2011. When the telescope ran out of the coolant needed to chill its sensitive infrared detectors, it was put into hibernation. However, instead of retiring the spacecraft, NASA repurposed it for a new mission focused on detecting near-Earth objects (NEOs) — asteroids and comets that could threaten Earth.

In 2013, NASA reactivated WISE under the name NEOWISE, with its new mission to identify and characterize NEOs. This cost-effective approach leveraged WISE's existing capabilities to make NEOWISE one of the most successful asteroid-hunting missions to date. NEOWISE used the instrument's infrared sensors to detect heat emitted by asteroids, enabling it to identify objects that might not be visible in optical light due to their dark surfaces.

NEOWISE significantly contributed to our understanding of NEOs, discovering and characterizing more than 44,000 asteroids and comets throughout its mission, including the discovery of 233 new NEOs. The mission provided valuable data that helped refine models of NEO distribution in the solar system, enhancing our ability to predict potential future impacts.

"One of NEOWISE's critical achievements was its contribution to better understanding a classification of asteroids known as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids — those with orbits that bring them close to Earth. By observing these objects in infrared light, NEOWISE was able to measure their size and reflectivity, more accurately assessing their potential threat," said SDL Distinguished Engineer and Scientist Pedro Sevilla.

This information is crucial for planetary defense, allowing scientists to evaluate better the likelihood and potential impact of asteroid collisions with Earth.

After the WISE reactivation as NEOWISE, SDL continued to provide mission operations support to JPL throughout the spacecraft’s extended mission, monitoring payload health, reviewing instrument command sequences, and supplying recommendations for anomaly resolution.

"SDL has been honored to work under the leadership of NASA, JPL and NEOWISE Principal Investigator Dr. Amy Mainzer for this important mission," Sevilla said. "The men and women of SDL look forward to helping discover more unknowns in our solar system as we embark on the next asteroid-hunting mission."

As NEOWISE concludes its mission, NASA is preparing for the next step in asteroid detection with the NEO Surveyor mission, slated for launch in 2027. NEO Surveyor represents a significant advancement over NEOWISE, designed specifically to detect and characterize NEOs. Unlike the repurposed NEOWISE spacecraft, the NEO Surveyor instrument is being built from the ground up with technology specifically tailored to its mission. Its enhanced capabilities will enable it to discover more NEOs, including those that are smaller or have more eccentric orbits than previously detected. The mission aims to identify 90% of asteroids 140 meters in diameter or larger, which could cause significant regional damage if they were to impact Earth.

SDL is contributing several subsystems to the NEO Surveyor instrument. SDL will design, fabricate and test the focal plane electronics housing; camera enclosure assembly; central electronics unit that operates the instrument, collects and processes imagery data, and performs instrument housekeeping operations; instrument cabling; and flight focal plane modules. SDL will also assemble, test, and calibrate the entire NEO Surveyor instrument, which will be nearly 8 feet wide and over 14 feet tall.

NEO Surveyor is expected to build on the legacy of NEOWISE, continuing the work of identifying and characterizing NEOs with much greater accuracy and efficiency. The mission will provide critical data that will help to inform future planetary defense planning, and it will contribute to our understanding of the population of small bodies in the solar system.

Headquartered on Utah State University's Innovation Campus in North Logan, UT, the Space Dynamics Laboratory is a nonprofit organization and a Department of Defense University Affiliated Research Center owned by USU. More than 1,300 dedicated SDL engineers, scientists, business professionals, and student employees solve technical challenges faced by the military, science community, and industry and support NASA's vision to explore the secrets of the universe for the benefit of all. SDL has field offices in Albuquerque, NM; Chantilly, VA; Dayton, OH; Huntsville, AL; Ogden, UT; and Stafford, VA. For more information, visit www.sdl.usu.edu.