A private company has an ambitious plan to resurrect NASA's Spitzer telescope, which could allow it to resume observations this decade.
Spitzer Space Telescope was deactivated
NASA shut down Spitzer in 2020 after almost 20 years of service. The telescope was still working well when it was retired. However, it had run out of coolant. That made it impossible to use the telescope and collect data from it, at least without completely damaging the remaining instruments. So, it was shut down before it had told its entire story.
The Spitzer Resurrector will travel from Earth to beyond the Sun, where the Spitzer telescope currently drifts through space. Image source: Tryfonov / Adobe The mission is currently known as the “Spitzer Resurrector,” and it would basically be a small spacecraft that could fit into a 1-meter-by-1-meter box,. The hope is to have the mission ready to launch by 2026. It would then take roughly three years for the spacecraft to reach where the telescope is. But it won’t resurrect NASA’s Spitzer by working on the hardware.
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