Initial Performance of the NEOWISE Reactivation Mission
Abstract
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft has been brought out of hibernation and has resumed surveying the sky at 3.4 and 4.6 μm. The scientific objectives of the NEOWISE reactivation mission are to detect, track, and characterize near-Earth asteroids and comets. The search for minor planets resumed on 2013 December 23, and the first new near-Earth object (NEO) was discovered 6 days later. As an infrared survey, NEOWISE detects asteroids based on their thermal emission and is equally sensitive to high and low albedo objects; consequently, NEOWISE-discovered NEOs tend to be large and dark. Over the course of its three-year mission, NEOWISE will determine radiometrically derived diameters and albedos for ~2000 NEOs and tens of thousands of Main Belt asteroids. The 32 months of hibernation have had no significant effect on the mission's performance. Image quality, sensitivity, photometric and astrometric accuracy, completeness, and the rate of minor planet detections are all essentially unchanged from the prime mission's post-cryogenic phase.
Additional Information
© 2014 American Astronomical Society. Received 2014 March 30; accepted 2014 June 23; published 2014 August 12. This publication makes use of data products from NEOWISE, which is a project of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This publication makes use of data products from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We thank the paper's referee for helpful comments that greatly improved the manuscript. We gratefully acknowledge the services specific to NEOWISE contributed by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, operated by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, operated by Harvard University. We also thank the worldwide community of dedicated amateur and professional astronomers devoted to minor planet follow-up observations. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.Attached Files
Published - 0004-637X_792_1_30.pdf
Submitted - 1406.6025v1.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 50022
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20140925-090040244
- NASA
- Created
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2014-09-25Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)