Article: NASA Shuts Down Sky-Mapping Scope

[kiwi]

A prolific sky-mapping telescope that has spent more than a year scanning the heavens for asteroids, comets and other cosmic objects received its last command today (Feb. 17).

NASA shut down its WISE spacecraft – short for Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer – at 3:00 p.m. EST (2000 UTC) today. The mission's principal investigator, Ned Wright of the University of California in Los Angeles, sent the final command to the now-hibernating spacecraft, according to an update from the WISE mission's official Twitter account.

"The WISE spacecraft will remain in hibernation without ground contacts awaiting possible future use," NASA officials said via Twitter.......

http://www.space.com/10895-nasa-wise-sp ... -ends.html

[davesmith_au]

Hmmmm, seems an un-wise move...

[allynh]

They have great image of the Pleiades cluster in the article.

This image shows the famous Pleiades cluster of stars as seen through the eyes of WISE, or NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. The mosaic contains a few hundred image frames - just a fraction of the more than one million WISE captured during its first complete survey of the sky in infrared light.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

I've asked this before, but I would love to have an EU description of what is happening in open clusters like that.

Pleiades (star cluster)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades_(star_cluster)

Open cluster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_star_cluster

[orrery]

The data gathered by WISE was absolutely spectacular. It will provide data for stellar cartographers to sift through for years to come. Its shut down is a sad day. We would do well to make a fleet of similar telescopes to replace her.