![]() To deal with these challenges, the project engineers and scientists at JPL and Caltech have worked with the observatory engineering team at Lockheed Martin Space's Littleton, Colorado, facility to find a path forward. ![]() The changing angle of Spitzer to the Sun could also trigger safety mechanisms intended to prevent spacecraft parts from overheating.Įntering safe mode can be particularly hazardous for the spacecraft, both because of its growing distance from Earth (which makes communicating more difficult) and because the aging onboard systems might not restart once they shut off. For instance, if the panels tilted more than 30 degrees from the Sun during the mission's early years, the software would have hit "pause," putting the spacecraft into "safe mode" until the mission team could figure out what was wrong. There are multiple ways these changes could trigger safety mechanisms in the spacecraft's flight software. Teaching the spacecraft to accept new conditions - such as the increasing angle of the solar panels during communications with Earth - isn't as simple as flipping a switch. That communications window would grow shorter year after year if Spitzer continued operating, which means there is a limit to how long it would be possible to operate the spacecraft efficiently. Spitzer can communicate with Earth for about 2.5 hours before it has to turn its solar panels back toward the Sun to recharge its batteries. These days, to communicate with Earth, Spitzer has to position its panels at a 53-degree angle away from the Sun (90 degrees would be fully facing away), even though the mission planners never intended for it to tilt more than 30 degrees from the Sun. The angle at which the panels point away from the Sun has increased every year that the mission has been operating. During those periods, the spacecraft must rely on a combination of solar power and battery power to operate. ![]() That distance, along with the curve of Spitzer's orbit, means that when the spacecraft points its fixed antenna at Earth to download data or receive commands, its solar panels tilt away from the Sun. Today it trails about 158 million miles (254 million kilometers) behind our planet - more than 600 times the distance between Earth and the Moon. Spitzer orbits the Sun on a path similar to Earth's but moves slightly slower. It has spied stars in every stage of life, mapped our home galaxy, captured gorgeous images of nebulas and probed newly discovered planets orbiting distant stars.īut as Spitzer's deputy mission manager, Joseph Hunt, said, "You can have a world-class spacecraft, but it doesn't mean anything if you can't get the data back home." Spitzer has lifted the veil on hidden objects in nearly every corner of the universe, from a new ring around Saturn to observations of some of the most distant galaxies known. It captures infrared light, which is often emitted by "warm" objects that aren't quite hot enough to radiate visible light. Managed and operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, Spitzer is a small but transformational observatory. By then, the spacecraft will have operated for more than 11 years beyond its prime mission, thanks to the Spitzer engineering team's ability to address unique challenges as the telescope slips farther and farther from Earth. After nearly 16 years of exploring the cosmos in infrared light, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope will be switched off permanently on Jan.
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