The Spitzer Space Telescope (SST), a telescope designed to observe infrared wavelengths, was launched in the middle of my grad school career in 2003. It is easily described as one of the great space telescopes in the history of astronomical observations. Earth's atmosphere blocks most infrared light from reaching the surface, so to truly understand objects emitting infrared light, we needed a space based telescope to remove the effects of Earth's atmosphere. The SST accomplished that.
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| Artist's conception of the SST. NASA/JPL-Caltech [Public domain] |
The SST had a limited lifetime because it required a supply of liquid helium to keep the instruments cooled to a level that infrared light observed was not coming from the telescope itself. This supply ran out in 2009 and many of the instruments were no longer operationally although a couple were, allowing the SST to continue to deliver great science.
The SST took images of galaxies, providing new information to further understand these objects. It gave us more information on the spread of infrared radiation in space. In addition, it helped discover new exoplanets.
Although the SST was still operational after its helium supply was exhausted, it still had a limited lifetime based on the ability of a battery to have power to continue sending signals back to Earth. Due to limited power, it was only sending data back for a short period of time each day. On January 20, 2020, astronomers ended the SST mission by sending a shut off signal.
A truly fantastic telescope that was decades in the making that once finally in space, drastically increased our knowledge of the cosmos.
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