Why was WISE discontinued?

I thought NASA was super excited about their WISE telescope, but I recently read that it was put in "hibernation"

Because NASA is afraid of the Aliens.

What else is new.

They don't want to know, when they actually get here.

That would ruin the whole surprise of attack.

Do you have a link that states WISE is discontinued? I went to the official site and saw updates as recent as late October, with no mention of shutting down.

wise.ssl.berkeley.edu...

I also googled "Why was WISE discontinued" and the only thing I found was this thread on the first page of google. Congrats, you're now famous

reply to post by Enlightenme1111


Well I read it on Wikipedia and it said that it was put into "Hibernation" so maybe it hasn't been discontineud after all...

I was just disappointed because they said that WISE would be able to discover if there's any gas giant planet in the outer edges of the solar system

it ran out of coolant but not before it took a great sweep of data. lots of brown dwarf data came from that thing.

Originally posted by Enlightenme1111
Do you have a link that states WISE is discontinued? I went to the official site and saw updates as recent as late October, with no mention of shutting down.

wise.ssl.berkeley.edu...

I also googled "Why was WISE discontinued" and the only thing I found was this thread on the first page of google. Congrats, you're now famous

That link on the faq page notes the following:
1. It was launched December 2009.
2. The 6 month mission was to photograph the entire sky at least once in 6 months.
3. It had enough coolant to operate for another 3 months for a total of 10 months (1 month checkout).

wise.ssl.berkeley.edu...

For how long will WISE collect data?
6 months, that’s all it takes to survey the entire sky.

Is there a possibility of an extended mission? (And what would that gain?)
The cryogen will last 10 months. There is a 1 month in-orbit check out period, and then the 6–month survey. The telescope will likely operate for an additional 3 months. A second pass at half the sky would increase the sensitivity of that part of the survey, find more Near-Earth Asteroids, help determine variability of some objects, and the distance and motion of other nearby objects.

So once it ran out of coolant, the mission was over. You might think it would be cold enough in space without coolant but apparently not as parts of the telescope itself could give off infrared heat that could interfere.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


A very good question is, how cold is space? Difficult to answer, space has no air to provide a carrier for temperature, an ambiguous answer to the temperature of space is that space has no temperature. In direct view of the sun however, which is impossible to avoid unless you find shade behind a body like a planet, solar radiation will heat near instantly a surface in space, to the degree of distance the surface is from the sun. Cooling takes longer in the shade because of the lack of a carrier, for instance there is no windchill in space.

Now the facts say the instruments operated at 20K, or 20ºC above Absolute Zero. I believe but may be off a bit but if you were on the shade side of Pluto a surface can eventually cool to 40K. So really heat buildup in space is more of an obstacle to defend against than cold, and which is why space probes rotate, or spin as they travel, because they can't find shade from the sun out there.

Now for some interesting facts on WISE:

Why do you need to cool the telescope optics and detectors?
All objects produce infrared light and the warmer they are the more they produce. The telescope needs to be colder than the objects in space it will observe so that it can see the dim infrared emission from them rather than from the telescope itself.

How cold will the components be?
The optics will be cooled to less than 20 degrees centigrade above absolute zero (20 Kelvins). The detectors need to be cooled further (particularly the Si:As) to lower noise detection. The Si:As detector will be cooled to less than 8 Kelvins. The MCT detectors operate at higher T, around 32 Kelvin.

How will you keep it that cold?
We will fill a giant thermos, called a cryostat, with solid hydrogen that surrounds the telescope.

How do you get the solid hydrogen in the telescope?
Liquid helium is used to cool hydrogen gas down into a solid state. The hydrogen is frozen around an aluminum foam structure inside the cryostat that conducts heat uniformly from the telescope into the solid hydrogen.

Lets asked the deputy project manager, Amy Mainzer.



((sigh)) lovely...

reply to post by muse7


maybe it's something to do with how NASA does things?

reply to post by DerepentLEstranger


That multi-million dollar "pen" versus "pencil" story is a very old hoax and myth

Sorry. Yeah, it's funny to pass around, though......

I very much like the magazine Scientific American, so here is their take (similar to all the other stories that discredit this myth):

This tale with its message of simplicity and thrift--not to mention a failure of common sense in a bureaucracy--floats around the Internet, hopping from in-box to in-box, and even surfaced during a 2002 episode of the West Wing. But, alas, it is just a myth.

Originally, NASA astronauts, like the Soviet cosmonauts, used pencils, according to NASA historians. In fact, NASA ordered 34 mechanical pencils from Houston's Tycam Engineering Manufacturing, Inc., in 1965. They paid $4,382.50 or $128.89 per pencil. When these prices became public, there was an outcry and NASA scrambled to find something cheaper for the astronauts to use.

Pencils may not have been the best choice anyway. The tips flaked and broke off, drifting in microgravity where they could potentially harm an astronaut or equipment. And pencils are flammable--a quality NASA wanted to avoid in onboard objects after the Apollo 1 fire.

The article: "Fact or Fiction?: NASA Spent Millions to Develop a Pen that Would Write in Space, whereas the Soviet Cosmonauts Used a Pencil"

The modern Internet is amazing, with a wealth of facts at your virtual fingertips....; But, it is also a slippery slope, loaded to the rafters with false information.....like this, for example.

Still, a very funny joke......

reply to post by ProudBird

According to that story, The Fisher pen company invested $1,000,000 in developing the space pen, then proceeded to make, guesstimating from details in the story, perhaps $1,000 profit on sales to NASA and the same amount on sales to the Russian space agency.

So, the Soviets and NASA apparently switched from pencils to pens around the same time, and the pencils cost NASA way more than the pens, which is kind of a funny, ironic twist to that myth that the pencils were cheaper.

But this makes Fisher look like not such a smart business, since making $2000 profit off a 1 million dollar investment doesn't seem like a good return, until you consider they probably sold more space pens to the public at much higher prices. Were they selling them to "Joe Public" for maybe 10-20 times what NASA paid for them? If so they probably made their million dollars back and then some. They talk about a shuttle pen costing $50 but they don't give the price of the public version of the space pen back in the days of Apollo.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I have a suspicion (and NO FACTS to support it) that maybe, just maybe, the "Fischer Pen" company might have concocted this Internet rumor??

Here is a link to a simple Google Search utilizing the words fisher pens in space

Read, and enjoy!!!

reply to post by ProudBird


Yeah, I don't know why development would cost a million dollars, it doesn't sound that hard to make

So now we have to debunk the bunk that was in the story that was used to debunk the other story?

I'm starting to get the sneaking suspicion that not everything published on the internet may be entirely factual!