The Impact of the Sun’s Activity on NASA’s NEOWISE Telescope: A Closer Look

2023-12-16 23:12:28

The sun’s activity occasionally disrupts radio communications on Earth. Soon our star will suffer from NASA’s NEOWISE telescope.

What is known

The sun will cause NEOWISE to burn up in the dense layers of the atmosphere. This is because the star’s increasing activity causes the atmosphere to heat up and expand, causing objects in orbit to decelerate and fall more quickly. The space telescope is expected to burn up following 2024, when it will no longer be able to correct its orbit.

By the way, the NEOWISE observatory was originally called WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer). The infrared telescope was launched into space 14 years ago, and two years later the sensors lost their sensitivity due to a lack of cryogenic coolant.

After another two years, WISE was renamed NEOWISE. Since the observatory was not sensitive enough to observe distant galaxies, scientists decided to use it to search for objects near our planet.

Since NEOWISE began its work, the sky has been scanned more than two dozen times. In this way, more than 3,000 objects approaching Earth have been discovered. The NEOWISE observatory was able to locate more than 200 of them.

Those: NASA

1702778229
#sun #NASAs #NEOWISE #space #telescope #burn #atmosphere