NASA’s newest spacecraft is currently perched atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base, north of Santa Barbara, Calif. It is scheduled to roar into space at dawn on Dec. 11, at 6:09:33 a.m. PST (9:09:33 a.m. EST), on a short journey to its final Earth-circling orbit 525 kilometers (326 miles) overhead.
“We can help protect our Earth by learning more about the diversity of potentially hazardous asteroids and comets,” said Amy Mainzer, deputy project scientist for the mission at JPL.
The farthest of the mission’s targets are powerful galaxies that are either churning out loads of new stars or dominated by voracious black holes. These galaxies are shrouded in dust, and often can’t be seen in visible light. WISE will expose millions, and may even find the most energetic, or luminous, galaxy in the universe.
“WISE can see these dusty objects so far away that we will be looking back in time 10 billion years, when galaxies were forming,” said Peter Eisenhardt, the mission’s project scientist at JPL. “By scanning the entire sky, we’ll learn just how extreme this galaxy formation process can get.”
Tags: Amy Mainzer, Black Holes, December 11 2009, Galaxy, JPL, NASA, Peter Eisenhardt, Space, Vandenberg Air Force Base, Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, WISE
Recent Articles
-
“CAPTURED: The Betty & Barny Hill UFO Incident”
“I remember the Betty & Barney Hill incident vividly, all the press, the interviews, and the subsequent television MOW, the book rights which were bought by James Earl Jones (who played Barney in the movie). This book authored by Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden, Betty Hill’s niece, was in 2007. I found the book to [...]
-
America Bleeds on its 234th Birthday.
What a Great Nation America is! Envision and founded upon great ideals. If part of our nation suffers an injustice or just bad luck, we all feel it, especially in the digital age that has brought us closer together in many ways, on many levels. Worldwide, we share everything, information, drama, voyeurism, pain, happiness. The [...]
-
A Stunning Graphic for “THE ASCENDANCY”
“The Ascendancy” is a 21st Century fantasy-adventure about the volatile world in which we live today. Dr. Thomas Allen Nelson says, “An inspiring and compassionate twenty-first century epic adventure, part Paradise Lost and part Wizard of Oz… An evolutionary and cultural vision that blends the grim equations of survival and extinction with the regenerative powers [...]
-
“Ghost of Machu Picchu”
Last night, Judy and I saw an incredible one hour show on Nova called “Ghosts of Machu Picchu.” If you get an opportunity to see it, do so. It is fascinating about the Incas who lived over 500 years ago and had the most remarkable skill of farming, architecture & design, ritual, military weaponry, knowledge [...]
-
Do You Wonder About Alien Intervention?
Dr. John E. Mack is one-of-kind genius. The loss of his life when he was hit by a Czech drunk driver in London was our loss. John E. Mack was a Harvard professor of psychiatry, who wrote and won the Pulitzer Prize for A PRINCE OF OUR DISORDER, a biography of T.E. Lawrence, or Lawrence [...]
Blogroll
You must be logged in to post a comment.
No comments
Comments feed for this article
Trackback link
http://johnweiskopf.com/ascendancyblog/wp-trackback.php?p=832