Spitzer Telescope
Liftoff
August 25, 2003
Mission Ended
January 30, 2020
Mission Info
The Spitzer Space Telescope is the fourth and final mission in NASA's Great Observatories Program - a family of four space-based observatories, each observing the Universe in a different kind of light. It was the most sensitive infrared space telescope in history when it launched. Spitzer orbits the Sun on almost the same path as Earth. It moves slower than Earth though, so the spacecraft drifts farther away from our planet each year.
Spitzer Space Telescope’s highly sensitive instruments allowed scientists a view into dusty stellar nurseries, the centers of galaxies, and newly forming planetary systems. Using Spitzer astronomers also have a view of cooler objects in space, like failed stars (brown dwarfs), extrasolar planets, giant molecular clouds, and organic molecules that may hold the secret to life on other planets.
Key Facts
Delta 7920H
Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Captured direct light from extrasolar planets for the first time
Discovered a giant ring of Saturn
Gathered more precise measurement of the Hubble constant
Discovered the rate at which the universe is stretching apart
Revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star, This discovery set a record for the greatest number of habitable-zone planets found around a single star outside our solar system
Mission Images
Mission News
NASA/JPL-CaltechGodzilla spotted in space
Caltech astronomer Robert Hurt , responsible for the majority of public images created from Spitzer data, spotted Godzilla in this image. This colorful image shows a nebula – a cloud of gas and dust in space – captured by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Over billions of years, countless stars have formed in the material there. During their lifetimes, the radiation they release carves away the gas and dust, reshaping the cloud. Major changes also occur when massive stars die and explode, becoming supernovae. When viewed in visible light, the kind human eyes can detect, this region is almost entirely obscured by dust clouds. But infrared light (wavelengths longer than what our eyes can perceive) can penetrate the clouds, revealing hidden regions like this one. Four colors (blue, cyan, green, and red) are used to represent different wavelengths of infrared light; yellow and white are combinations of those wavelengths. Blue and cyan represent wavelengths primarily emitted by stars; dust and organic molecules called hydrocarbons appear green; and warm dust that’s been heated by stars or supernovae appears red.
