P.R. Eisenhardt (JPL/Caltech), E.L. Wright (UCLA), WISE Team
The Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) was confirmed by NASA for Phase B (definition study) in August 2004. WISE is a Medium-class Explorer program mission (MIDEX) which will map the entire sky in 4 bands between 3 and 25 microns with vastly greater sensitivity than previous all-sky surveys at these wavelengths.
The 40 cm WISE telescope will be cooled using a solid hydrogen cryostat. Dichroics will enable all four bands to simultaneously image the 46 arcmin field of view, using 1024 x 1024 pixel HgCdTe and Si:As detector arrays. The spacecraft will scan the sky at a constant rate while a scan mirror momentarily freezes the image on the detectors with an 11 second duty cycle. The high inclination sun-synchronous orbit will enable a complete sky survey in 6 months of operation. Data will be downlinked via TDRSS and processed and delivered to the science community by IPAC. Launch on a Delta 7320 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base is planned for 2008.
Key science objectives for WISE include finding the most luminous infrared galaxies in the universe, and the closest brown dwarfs to the sun. Other objectives range from measuring the diameters of more than 100,000 asteroids to using the Sachs-Wolfe effect to assess dark energy independently of supernovae.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 5
© 2004. The American Astronomical Society.