WISE is a highly sensitive astronomical telescope that will survey the entire sky in four mid‐infrared bands spanning from 2.8 to 26 microns. The instrument will catalog hundreds of millions of astronomical objects including many asteroids (among them several hundred near‐earth asteroids), many brown draft stars (including, quite possibly, the closest star to our Sun), and ultra‐luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs). WISE is the only currently‐funded NASA Mid‐class Explorer (MIDEX) program. It launched into a sun‐synchronous polar orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base on December 14, 2009, at 9:09 a.m. EDT (1409 GMT).
Under contract to JPL, SDL built, tested, and calibrated the WISE science instrument. Following delivery of the payload, SDL has provided support for instrument‐spacecraft integration and pre‐launch operations, and will provide ongoing on‐orbit operations support throughout the mission.
The WISE payload stands over 6 feet tall and weighs nearly 800 lbs. Based on designs from the SDL‐developed SPIRIT III and WIRE payloads, WISE features a 40‐cm all‐reflective imaging telescope housed in a solid‐hydrogen cryostat, and utilizes four 1024 X 1024 pixel infrared focal plane arrays.
The instrument includes:
2 HgCdTe arrays for the 3.3 and 4.7 micron channels
2 Si:As arrays for the 12 and 23 micron channels
A 40‐cm telescope and re‐imaging optics (achieving 6‐12 arc second diffraction‐limited resolution across the spectral band)
A cryogenic scan mirror to stabilize the line‐of‐sight while each image is taken
A two‐stage solid‐hydrogen cryostat to cool optics to ~11 Kelvin and detectors to ~7.3 Kelvin
The instrument will have an on‐orbit lifetime of ~10 months, facilitating one‐and‐a‐half full sky surveys.
SDL has been responsible for all aspects of payload development and testing, including payload management; payload system engineering (radiometrics, goniometrics, requirements allocation and flow‐down, uncertainty budget development, performance modeling, simulation, and trade studies, sensor design and characterization planning, verification and validation planning and execution); flight electronics development; payload integration and environmental testing; and ground calibration. Along with industry partners, SDL led efforts to develop the optics, focal plane module assemblies, and cryogenic support system.
First WISE Snapshot in Carina
The picture is an image of the sky just off the Milky Way galaxy. The main star is V482 CAR. The image is a composite of the three shortest wavelength IR bands in WISE.
The field-of-view of the image is about 47' square, covered by about a million pixels in each band. The location of the image is at a galactic latitude/longitude of 279.2, -5.2, in the constellation Carina.
Taken by a previous generation scientific instrument in 1983, this image shows a patch of sky as fuzzy pixels.
The same area, containing the Carina constellation, appears crisp and detailed in this image sent back by the new WISE instrument during its initial calibration exercises.
WISE Fact Sheet
SDL's Infrared Capabilities