Update on the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)

Physics – Optics

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

6

Scientific paper

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), a NASA MIDEX mission, will survey the entire sky in four bands from 3.3 to 23 microns with a sensitivity 1000 times greater than the IRAS survey. The WISE survey will extend the Two Micron All Sky Survey into the thermal infrared and will provide an important catalog for the James Webb Space Telescope. Using 10242 HgCdTe and Si:As arrays at 3.3, 4.7, 12 and 23 microns, WISE will find the most luminous galaxies in the universe, the closest stars to the Sun, and it will detect most of the main belt asteroids larger than 3 km. The single WISE instrument consists of a 40 cm diamond-turned aluminum afocal telescope, a two-stage solid hydrogen cryostat, a scan mirror mechanism, and reimaging optics giving 5" resolution (full-width-half-maximum). The use of dichroics and beamsplitters allows four color images of a 47'x47' field of view to be taken every 8.8 seconds, synchronized with the orbital motion to provide total sky coverage with overlap between revolutions. WISE will be placed into a Sun-synchronous polar orbit on a Delta 7320-10 launch vehicle. The WISE survey approach is simple and efficient. The three-axis-stabilized spacecraft rotates at a constant rate while the scan mirror freezes the telescope line of sight during each exposure. WISE has completed its mission Preliminary Design Review and its NASA Confirmation Review, and the project is awaiting confirmation from NASA to proceed to the Critical Design phase. Much of the payload hardware is now complete, and assembly of the payload will occur over the next year. WISE is scheduled to launch in late 2009; the project web site can be found at www.wise.ssl.berkeley.edu.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Update on the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Update on the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Update on the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1619341

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.