If Spitzer Could Talk: An Interview with NASA's Coolest Space Telescope
Tuesday, May 5, 2009 - 16:14
in Astronomy & Space
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope is about to use its last drop of the coolant that has chilled it for the past five-and-a-half years. On about May 12, give or take a week or so, the observatory is predicted to run out of the liquid helium that has run through its veins, keeping its infrared detectors at frosty operating temperatures of just a few degrees above the coldest temperature possible, called absolute zero.