As NASA’s Spitzer telescope’s mission ends, here’s a look back at its discoveries
After 16 years and five months in space, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope is signing off. On January 30, engineers will instruct the telescope to power down, bringing an end to one of NASA’s premier orbiting observatories. The telescope’s infrared vision witnessed the births and deaths of stars, charted the Milky Way, found worlds orbiting other suns, spied on comets and planets in our solar system and sought out galaxies in the farthest reaches of the cosmos. Much of the universe hides behind dust that blocks visible starlight from reaching our eyes. Spitzer’s goal was to knock down those walls. Its detectors are sensitive to infrared light that can penetrate clouds of dust and reveal what lurks beyond. “We’re lifting the cosmic veil on the universe,” said former mission manager Suzanne Dodd, a spacecraft operations expert at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., at a January 22 NASA TV broadcast reflecting on Spitzer’s accomplishments. Spitzer launched on August 25, 2003, into an orbit...