Spitzer Telescope Celebrates 10th Anniversary

Ten years after its launch, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has much to be proud of.

Equipped with infrared vision that allows it to peer into the far and dusty side of the universe, the telescope studied the comet dubbed Tempel 1, which was later hit by NAsA' Deep Impact mission in 2005. In the course of its examination of the comet, Spitzer revealed Tempel 1's composition to be one that resembled that of solar systems beyond our own.

Spitzer was also responsible for discovery the largest of Saturn's many rings, an enormous wispy band of ice and dust that, while extremely faint in visible light, gave off a glow from its heat the telescope's infrared detectors were able to pick up.

The telescope has studied asteroids, planet and galaxies, and discovered carbon spheres in space resembling soccer balls that researchers since named buckyballs. However, arguably much of its most important work took place beyond the solar system. Spitzer was the first telescope, for example, to detect light coming from a planet outside our solar system -- a discovery mission leaders never anticipated.

And nor did it stop there.

"With Spitzer's ongoing studies of these exotic worlds, astronomers have been able to probe their composition, dynamics and more, revolutionizing the study of exoplanet atmospheres," a NASA statement explains.

Other accomplishments through the last decade include obtaining a census of stars currently under formation in nearby clouds, developing a more accurate map of the Milky Way's spiral-arm structure and, through the help of the Hubble Space Telescope, revealing that the most distant known galaxies are far more massive and mature than expected.

"I always knew Spitzer would work, but I had no idea that it would be as productive, exciting and long-lived as it has been," said Spitzer project scientist Michael Werner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who helped conceive the mission. "The spectacular images that it continues to return, and its cutting-edge science, go far beyond anything we could have imagined when we started on this journey more than 30 years ago."

Going forward, scientists are putting the venerable telescope to work once again, this time in helping to identify potential candidates for NASA' mission to capture and relocate a near-Earth asteroid.

"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."