Explained: What is NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope?

News: Spitzer Space Telescope will conclude its mission on 30^th January 2020

Facts:

About Spitzer Space Telescope

• Launched in 2003, it is a space-borne observatory and is part of NASA’s “Great Observatories”.
•  It uses an ultra-sensitive infrared telescope to study asteroids, comets, planets and distant galaxies.

Achievements:

• First telescope to detect light from an exoplanet
• found a ring of Saturn in 2009
•  Made the first exoplanet weather map of temperature variations over the surface of a gas exoplanet.

Additional Information

NASA’s series of Great Observatories satellites:

• They are four large, powerful space-based astronomical telescopes.
• The telescopes other than Spitzer Space Telescope are Hubble Space Telescope, Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.