(IRAC), the Infrared Spectrograph (IRS),
and the Multi-band Imaging Photometer
for Spitzer (MIPS)—all featured significant
involvement
from
academic
and
industry.
With a final price tag estimated at
about $800 million, SIRTF rocketed into
space from Space Launch Complex
(SLC)-17B at Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station, Fla., at 1:35 p.m. EDT on 25 August
2003. Original plans called for SIRTF to
operate for at least 30 months, although
it was hoped to run the observatory
for as long as five years or until its liquid
helium coolant was depleted. As
circumstances transpired, this depletion
did not occur until May 2009, after
which it was determined that the two
shortest-wavelength components of
IRAC remained operable and a “Warm
Mission” was authorised.
By this time, SIRTF had since been
renamed in honour of the U.S. theoretical
physicist
and
astronomer
Lyman
Spitzer (1914-1997), one of the earliest
proponents for the idea of a space-based
telescope. The formal announcement
of the spacecraft’s new name came
in December 2003, when NASA lauded
Spitzer’s “vision and contribution to
science” and noted that a NASAsponsored contest had “received more
than 7,000 essay entries from all over the
Spitzer has found buckyballs in space, as illustrated by this artist’s conception showing the carbon balls coming out from the
type of object where they were discovered - a dying star and the
material it sheds, known as a planetary nebula.
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC)
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world.” The winning entry came from a
resident of British Columbia.
Since then, the mechanical Spitzer has
played an enormous role in opening our
eyes and consciousness to the mysteries
and wonders of the Universe around us. It
This diagram illustrates where Spitzer’s vision extends in the
spectrum of light, shown as a horizontal band. Vertical bars
indicate different regions of the electromatic spectrum. On the
left is the visible spectrum, covering the extent of human vision.
On the right are the wavelengths spanned by Spitzer’s detectors.
has been used to examine comets and
asteroids, count stars, scrutinise planets
and galaxies and image football-shaped
carbon spheres in space, known as
‘buckyballs’. Particular focuses have
included Comet Tempel 1—impacted by
NASA’s Deep Impact mission—and the
surprising discovery in October 2009 of
Saturn’s largest ring. Now known as the
“Phoebe ring”, its existence had been
predicted in the 1970s and it lies just
interior of the orbit of the moon Phoebe.
It was calculated to extend outward up
to 300 Saturn radii and inward to the orbit
of the moon Iapetus at 59 Saturn radii,
making its thickness about 20 times that
of the diameter of the giant planet itself.
Perhaps Spitzer’s most astonishing finds
came from beyond our Solar System. The
telescope was the first to detect light
coming from a planet outside the Sun’s
realm, which represented a feat not in
the mission’s original design. With Spitzer’s
ongoing studies of these exotic worlds,
astronomers have been able to probe
their composition, dynamics, and more,
revolutionising the study of “exoplanet”
atmospheres. Other discoveries and
accomplishments of the mission include
a complete census of forming stars in
nearby clouds, a new and improved map
of the Milky Way’s spiral-arm structure,
www.RocketSTEM.org