For one UCLA professor, Friday the 13th turned out to be a very
lucky day this year.
Physics and astronomy Professor Edward Wright and his team of
scientists received approval from NASA on Oct. 13 to build a
satellite they had first proposed in 1998.
Scheduled to launch in 2009, the satellite will scan the entire
sky, using infrared detectors to identify previously undiscovered
objects including stars and asteroids.
It may also give scientists more insight into phenomena such as
galaxy formation and the possibility of dark energy.
The satellite is nicknamed WISE, the Wide-field Infrared Survey
Explorer.
“Infrared is a new field, and I think it can really open
up new vistas,” Wright said. “I’m interested in
discovering things, as opposed to doing detailed studies of known
things.”
While infrared scans of the sky have been done before, the new
satellite’s sensors are 500 times more sensitive than
previous missions have been.
“It’s like going from the naked eye to a
telescope,” Wright said.
The project is expected to help scientists gain a better
understanding of how parts of the universe evolved, said Peter
Eisenhardt, the team’s project manager at the Jet Propulsion
Lab in Pasadena.
“In some ways I like to say that WISE is going to complete
the basic reconnaissance of the universe,” Eisenhardt said.
“We still don’t really understand what’s out
there.”
According to a press release from UCLA, WISE will capture about
a million images during seven months in orbit.
One of the mission’s primary goals is to identify stars
scientists have not yet found.
Eisenhardt estimated that about two-thirds of the stars within
25 light years of our sun have yet to be discovered, and WISE will
be able to pinpoint them.
Some of these stars will likely be brown dwarves, Wright said.
Brown dwarves are older and cooler, which makes them difficult to
detect with previous infrared technology. But WISE’s
detectors are sensitive enough to pick up on even the minimal heat
given off by these stars.
“We could see stars that have planets,” he said.
Wright added that the same sensitive technology will allow the
team to locate previously undiscovered asteroids.
Because asteroids are not uniformly shaped, they do not always
reflect light well, making them hard to detect with a standard
telescope.
“That’s primarily significant for planetary
protection,” Wright said. “It is possible that an
asteroid could hit us. We’ll be able to see if there are any
dark, stealth asteroids out there.”
Additionally, the team will look at colliding galaxies, which
are unusually luminous.
“It’s going to tell us a lot about how galaxies came
to be put together,” Wright said. “We’ll be able
to see the history of star formation in the Milky Way.”
Wright said the mission may be able to settle some long-standing
questions in the astronomy community, including confirming the
existence of dark energy.
Scientists suspect that dark energy exists and is responsible
for accelerating the expansion of the universe. Wright said
WISE’s infrared sensors will be able to detect whether
photons passing through galaxies have gained energy, which would
indicate that material in the universe is expanding. That, in turn,
would seem to confirm the existence of dark matter.
But Eisenhardt said that while the team is excited about the
mission, the road to approval was not always a smooth one. The
project was first proposed to NASA in 1998, but was denied funding
because the space agency was concerned that the project’s
budget would be too large.
It was not until 2003 that WISE scientists were able to reapply,
and then they had to grapple with budget cuts to NASA’s
Explorer program, which houses the WISE project.
And it would be another two years before the project’s
construction was guaranteed.
“It’s been a long, tough road,” Eisenhardt
said.
But he added that it was worth the wait.
“All-sky surveys are incredibly useful,” he said.
“Their legacy endures for decades.”