WISE, Spitzer and NEOs
2010The NASA Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) was launched on December 14, 2010. By September WISE had discovered about 130 new NEAs with its 40-cm telescope and multi-wavelength infrared camera. Currently WISE is finding 20 - 30 % of the NEOs discovered in 2010. WISE detects asteroids by virtue of their thermal radiation, which provides direct information on the sizes of the objects. In contrast, optical telescopes detect sunlight reflected from an asteroid’s surface, which provides only a very rough size estimate. However, the combination of observations made in the visual and thermal- infrared spectral regions enables both the size and albedo of an asteroid to be determined.
The above principle is used by the international ExploreNEOs programme, in which the Spitzer Space Telescope in its post-cryogenic phase is being used to observe the thermal emission from known NEOs, which have been observed by optical telescopes, with the aim of providing sizes and albedos for around 700 members of the NEO population.
Observations commenced in October 2009 and will continue into 2011. As of September 2010 some 300 NEOs had been observed by Warm Spitzer. The program will help to characterize the NEO population and provide a very useful database for the selection of targets for NEO rendezvous and mitigation test missions.
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