Overview

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is a four-channel, super-cooled infrared telescope designed to provide a full sky, infrared map that, in part, will help the James Webb Space Telescope identify which objects to observe.

Additionally, WISE will measure more than 100,000 asteroids in the solar system, and identify two-thirds of all stars in the solar neighborhood that have not yet been seen — including those closest to the Sun. WISE will study star-forming regions in the Milky Way and in the most luminous galaxies in the universe, providing an independent test of the universe’s dark energy content. The WISE telescope launched December 14, 2009.

Our Role

In April 2003, NASA selected Ball Aerospace as a team member to develop WISE for upcoming, medium-class Explorer Program missions.

Like the Ball Aerospace Orbital Express NEXTSAT spacecraft, the WISE spacecraft is based on the versatile, space-proven Ball Aerospace RS-300 spacecraft bus design. Under contract to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Ball Aerospace conducted the spacecraft design, build, and test; and conducted flight system testing and support operations.

WISE has the ability to survey the entire sky with 500 times more sensitivity than previous infrared missions, and should provide information to astronomers, physicists and the public for decades.

This animation created by Ball Aerospace shows a schematic of WISE’s orbit. WISE will be placed in an orbit that takes it over the north and south poles of Earth and several hundred miles above the dividing line between day and night on Earth—called the terminator. As it circles Earth, WISE will be oriented so as to keep its solar panels always facing the Sun.