WISE, a mission that will find ALL the neighbours |
WISE, a mission that will find ALL the neighbours |
Dec 13 2009, 07:59 PM
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#46
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 87 Joined: 9-November 07 Member No.: 3958 |
I just remembered that the chilling routine involves a team of poor guys whose sole job is to run those tanks of liquid helium up the tower to the top of the rocket... Something similar happened with ESA's ISO far-IR observatory (pardon the redundancy with the acronym). A team had to head out to check something on the Ariane 4 booster well after the area would normally be cleared, and one of the payload teams took the opportunity to head out at the same time and top off its liquid helium dewar. With the boiloff from external conditions in French Guyana, scuttlebutt was that this added a few months to the cryogenic mission lifetime (something like 27 months of an expected 24 and required 18). |
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Dec 14 2009, 03:08 PM
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#47
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2920 Joined: 14-February 06 From: Very close to the Pyrénées Mountains (France) Member No.: 682 |
Wise has been succesfully deployed in orbit
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Dec 14 2009, 04:28 PM
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#48
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Senior Member Group: Admin Posts: 4763 Joined: 15-March 05 From: Glendale, AZ Member No.: 197 |
Yes indeed. And I missed the launch
Can't wait for the science results to start coming in. -------------------- If Occam had heard my theory, things would be very different now.
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Dec 14 2009, 07:54 PM
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#49
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 60 Joined: 3-January 09 Member No.: 4520 |
Here's a general "mission/science expectations" summary post, since I was curious, and I had to dig around a bit to get it:
Emily says, "There's a one-month commissioning phase before science starts. ... The main imaging instrument gets turned on in five days. Sixteen days after launch, the cryostat cover will be blown off. Then there are two weeks of checkouts of instruments and systems, followed by a nine-month nominal mission. That nine months will allow them to perform 1.5 complete sky surveys." There's one sky survey in six months because it's in a sun-synchronous orbit and thus WISE hits both sides of the sky in its orbit (obviously), and it scans the skies by waiting for Earth to orbit the Sun. Space.com adds that "WISE will capture about 5,700 pictures a day of the infrared sky. The mission management team says it will release the first science data within one month of launch." And one of the project scientists said in the press conference that they'll be announcing interesting objects as they spot them. But the bulk of the data will be released in two big chunks at the very end of the mission - first release, April 2011, second, March 2012, according to this. In case it's not obvious: I think this mission is very exciting. Congrats to NASA on a successful launch! |
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Dec 23 2009, 06:56 AM
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#50
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2173 Joined: 28-December 04 From: Florida, USA Member No.: 132 |
For those who like observing things in orbit:
I've pasted the entire post here. Seeing WISE "WISE is now in the Heavens Above orbit database. It will be favorably placed over Los Angeles on the morning of Dec 24, and I will try to observe it. You can get predictions for you own location from Heavens Above and try to spot it. If you try leave a comment describing your observation." -- Ned Wright, WISE PI |
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Dec 30 2009, 01:52 AM
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#51
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Member Group: Members Posts: 813 Joined: 29-December 05 From: NE Oh, USA Member No.: 627 |
NASA's WISE Space Telescope Jettisons its Cover12.29.09
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/new...se20091229.html WISE is scheduled to begin its survey of the infrared heavens in mid-January of 2010. Really looking forward to the asteroid, brown dwarves results. And the unexpected! Craig |
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Dec 30 2009, 02:03 AM
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#52
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8783 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Always a relief to hear that the last critical deployment event for a mission was successful!
Here's to seeing the unexpected...we always do. EDIT: First guess at the unexpected: Spotting the Solar System's "debris trail". Given the fact that matter is pretty sparsely distributed in interstellar space, there should be a fairly constant escapement of micron-sized dust along with all kinds of molecular species that should stand out by contrast. This outflow of course would be strongly influenced by the heliopause & other effects...but it would be interesting & scientifically useful for many reasons if it could be observed & characterized. -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Jan 6 2010, 10:24 PM
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#53
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1887 Joined: 20-November 04 From: Iowa Member No.: 110 |
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Jan 7 2010, 03:57 AM
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#54
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2173 Joined: 28-December 04 From: Florida, USA Member No.: 132 |
"More soon, including a comparison of this new WISE image vs. the old catalogs it will replace: COBE and IRAS."
http://www.cosmicdiary.org/blogs/nasa/amy_mainzer/?p=637 |
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Jan 23 2010, 09:52 PM
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#55
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Member Group: Members Posts: 813 Joined: 29-December 05 From: NE Oh, USA Member No.: 627 |
Emily has posted the WISE news regarding the team's first asteroid discovery...
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002316/ Exciting.... and open the WISE image... expand it and look at ALL those little red dots...lots and lots of little red (which means cool) dots. http://www.planetary.org/image/PIA12499.jpg Any brown dwarfs in there? I tremble! Craig |
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Jan 24 2010, 04:06 PM
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#56
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Member Group: Members Posts: 910 Joined: 4-September 06 From: Boston Member No.: 1102 |
Wow, there are lots of faint red dots in the image. However, I have a question on the number of asteroids Wise will find. If the nominal mission is 200 days, and is expected to find hundres or thousands of asteroids, then that is 1/day or 10/day for 200 or 2000 asteroids. From first light to first asteroid was 6 days---that is about 33 in 200 day mission. What am I misunderstanding?
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Jan 24 2010, 04:22 PM
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#57
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3516 Joined: 4-November 05 From: North Wales Member No.: 542 |
The time lag due to the need for follow-up observations prior to announcement?
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Jan 24 2010, 04:43 PM
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#58
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1018 Joined: 29-November 05 From: Seattle, WA, USA Member No.: 590 |
Makes sense. Takes time to settle into a new routine, work out the bugs, fill the pipeline, etc. I'll repeat my concern that some of these objects will end up being hard to follow up on. Either because there are just too many for the available ground instruments or because they can't be seen from the ground at all.
But we'll see. --Greg |
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Jan 25 2010, 05:08 PM
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#59
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Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
There's interesting discussion of these issues going on in the Minor Planets Mailing List by people who (unlike me) actually know what they are talking about in terms of astrometry and followup.
-------------------- My website - My Patreon - @elakdawalla on Twitter - Please support unmannedspaceflight.com by donating here.
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Jan 25 2010, 06:28 PM
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#60
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1018 Joined: 29-November 05 From: Seattle, WA, USA Member No.: 590 |
Thanks, Emily. One post there, from Richard Kowalski with the Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona seemed especially helpful.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mpml/message/22940 In particular, he quoted Tim Spahr, Director of the Minor Planet Center as saying: "It seems there is some information lacking that will help the understanding of the WISE mission a bit better. First and foremost, when fully operational, the spacecraft will observe each object ~10 times over ~1.0 days. Thus, each object observed will be of 'designatable' quality. Further, NASA has funded various projects to do follow-up specifically of their NEOs. At 1-2 new NEOs per day, there is an excellent chance that most NEOs will be followed-up with existing resources. Lastly, and this seems lost on nearly everyone, the existing follow-up capabilities are really staggering now. H55, G96, and 291 observe nearly every single new NEO discovered. It is really rather spectacular. So my feeling is really that WISE will probably not generate a big bunch of things with little or no information. "On the MBA side, the MPC expects to link most WISE discoveries with observations from G96, 691 (also funded to support WISE directly), and 703. But even if we don't, there's nothing wrong with a bunch of 2-night objects in our files, waiting for other identifications at other oppositions in the future." That pretty much answered my questions. Thanks again! --Greg |
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