NASA pulls the plug on the Spitzer Space Telescope after more than 16 years of trail-blazing infrared observations, finally bringing the mission to a close.
An extremely sharp infrared view of the Milky Way’s central regions may shed light on how massive stars form and what feeds the galaxy’s central black hole.
After a search for an outside funding source turned up empty, NASA plans to end observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope in January to conclude a 16-year mission that discovered exoplanets, studied galaxies in the ancient universe, and peered at planets and asteroids in our own Solar System.
Scientists are using SOFIA to survey young stars more than ten-times the mass of the Sun in an ongoing study to understand how massive stars form in our galaxy.