10 Years of NASA’s Spitzer Telescope in Space

By: Zain Nabi  |   August 25th, 2013   |   News

NASA’s Spitzer telescope has marked its ten successful years in space and it is still going strong. NASA ten years ago launched its Spitzer telescope in space on August, 25, 2003. Spitzer telescope in these ten years has captured a number of magnificent images and made a vast list of discoveries, while it also helped many astronomers study about comets, stars, asteroids, planets and buckyballs.

 

The Delta II rocket launched NASA’s Spitzer telescope in space ten years ago. The US fourth space agency’s four Great Observatories continue to light up the dark side of the universe with its infrared eyes. The Spitzer space telescope is used to study comets and asteroids, counted stars, different planets and galaxies, and also to discover soccer ball-shaped carbon spheres by the astronomers in space known as buckyballs.

 

The telescope will soon be used to explore the cosmos near or far, in its second decade of scientific survey. The potential candidates are able to develop a mission to detain, redirect and discover a near-Earth asteroid with the help of NASA.

 

“President Obama’s goal of visiting an asteroid by 2025 combines NASA’s diverse talents in a unified endeavor,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington. “Using Spitzer to help us characterize asteroids and potential targets for an asteroid mission advances both science and exploration.”

 

The Spitzer with its infrared vision is able to see each and every side of the universe whether it is far, cold and dusty. The telescope is also used to study the comet dubbed Tempel 1, which is close to the home. The original name of Spitzer was Space Infrared Telescope Facility, but later on after its launch it was renamed in honor of Lyman Spitzer, the late astronomer. Lyman Spitzer was considered as the father of space telescopes. It was his efforts that NASA was able to develop its Hubble Space Telescope, in 1990.

 

“I get very excited about the serendipitous discoveries in areas we never anticipated,” said Dave Gallagher, Spitzer’s project manager at JPL from 1999 to 2004, reminding him of a favorite quote from Marcel Proust: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”