WISE Discovers 95 New Near-Earth Asteroids 112
astroengine writes "NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has turned up 25,000 new asteroid discoveries, 95 of which are near-Earth objects (NEOs). This mission is as fascinating as it is frightening. Capable of spotting any cosmic object glowing in infrared wavelengths, WISE has become an expert asteroid hunter, seeing these interplanetary vagabonds, some of which get uncomfortably close to our planet."
I'm a Member of the WISE Team (Score:5, Informative)
Or, I'm a grad student of the PI, anyway. Something they didn't note in the article is that sometime today the satellite successfully imaged 100% of the sky, after ~6 months of successful operation. The cryogen is currently expected to last until the first week of Nov or so, so we should be able to get half the sky double covered. In principal, we could do the full sky twice with the shorter wavelength channels, but there isn't funding for a warm mission as of right now.
Sadly, the asteroid finding channel needs the cryogen.
Check out the WISE website [berkeley.edu], though. This mission is almost certain to produce images that will be used by Google and Microsoft in the future. It's also producing a catalog of interesting objects for followup by the James Web Space Telescope.
Re:Hey Slashdot! (Score:3, Informative)