When was spitzer space telescope launched

The first Spitzer images and spectra are released to the public. May 15, — Spitzer depletes its onboard supply of liquid helium , used to cool the telescope mirror to as low as 5. Mission engineers are able to resume data collection using two out of four wavelength channels on the Infrared Array Camera IRAC instrument.

Infrared wavelengths are often referred to by their physical length; in this case, 3. A micron is about one millionth of a meter. About JPL. Engage With JPL. Mission Statistics. Launch Date Aug 25, Target Stars and Galaxies.

About the mission. Support Our Science. Utility Menu News Events. Spitzer Space Telescope. Share this Page. Advances in optics eventually improved scientists' views of the planets, stars and distant galaxies, but Earth's atmosphere still blocked much of the light for observers on the ground. Larger telescopes were, and still are placed atop mountains, where the thinner atmosphere at higher elevations allows clearer pictures.

In , soon after World War II, astronomer Lyman Spitzer proposed launching a space telescope, which could overcome the limitations of ground-based observatories. It took a couple more decades before the idea garnered enough support for the National Academy of Science to organize a committee of scientists to evaluate the potential of a Large Space Telescope.

With Spitzer at the helm, the committee published a document in that outlined the scientific uses of a Large Space Telescope and advocated for its construction, according to a history of the telescope written by Gabriel Olkoski for NASA.

NASA was already considering a space telescope of some type, but they were undecided on how big to make it and where to start. The expensive project was a tough sell, and funding was initially denied by the House Appropriations Subcommittee in Development began almost immediately, and NASA planned to launch the telescope in , but various production delays pushed the launch date back to In the meantime, the Large Space Telescope was renamed the Hubble HST in honor of Edwin Hubble , an American astronomer who, among other things, determined that the universe extended beyond the borders of the Milky Way.

The HST was delayed once more after the space shuttle Challenger exploded a minute after takeoff on January 28 of that year, killing all seven astronauts on board. It took two years before shuttle flights could resume and NASA could begin planning Hubble's launch again. The world's first space telescope finally launched aboard space shuttle Discovery on April 24, Hubble experienced equipment issues right off the bat.

The telescope's images came back so blurry that they were close to useless. Hubble's main mirror had a defect — a spherical aberration caused by a manufacturing error.

It took three years before NASA could mount a repair mission. On Dec. In December , the first new images from Hubble reached Earth, and they were breathtaking. Since then, Hubble has continued to provide unprecedented information about our universe and inspire curious minds around the world. Hubble transmits about gigabytes of science data every week. That would be roughly 3, feet 1, meters of books on a shelf. The collection of pictures and data is stored on magneto-optical disks.