The planned mission period was to be 2.5 years with a pre-launch expectation that the mission could extend to five or slightly more years until the onboard In keeping with NASA tradition, the telescope was renamed after its successful demonstration of operation, on 18 December 2003. On 3 June 2008, scientists unveiled the largest, most detailed infrared portrait of the In January 2012, it was reported that further analysis of the An artist rendering of the Spitzer Space Telescope.The launch of SIRTF in 2003 aboard the 300th Delta rocket.
Several flights were anticipated with a probable transition into a more extended mode of operation, possibly in association with a future space platform or space station. The first flight was expected to occur about 1990, with the succeeding flights anticipated beginning approximately one year later. Unlike most By the early 1970s, astronomers began to consider the possibility of placing an Earlier infrared observations had been made by both space-based and ground-based Most of the early concepts envisioned repeated flights aboard the NASA Space Shuttle. This mystery has deepened with the results of the In August 2009, the telescope found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets orbiting a young star.In October 2009, astronomers Anne J. Verbiscer, Michael F. Skrutskie, and Douglas P. Hamilton published findings of the "MIPSGAL is a similar survey covering 278° of the galactic disk at longer wavelengths.
This approach was developed in an era when the Shuttle program was expected to support weekly flights of up to 30 days duration. SIRTF would be a 1-meter class, cryogenically cooled, multi-user facility consisting of a telescope and associated focal plane instruments.
However, the Spacelab-2 flight aboard One of the most important advances of this redesign was an The primary instrument package (telescope and cryogenic chamber) was developed by Where once it could transmit data continuously, it was subsequentlyThe first images taken by SST were designed to show off the abilities of the telescope and showed a glowing stellar nursery; a big swirling, dusty As one of its most noteworthy observations, in 2005, SST became the first telescope to directly capture light from While some time on the telescope is reserved for participating institutions and crucial projects, astronomers around the world also have the opportunity to submit proposals for observing time. Important targets include forming stars (In May 2007, astronomers successfully mapped the atmospheric temperature of Starting in September 2006 the telescope participated in a series of surveys called the Scientists have long wondered how tiny silicate crystals, which need high temperatures to form, have found their way into frozen comets, born in the very cold environment of the Solar System's outer edges. The crystals would have begun as non-crystallized, amorphous silicate particles, part of the mix of gas and dust from which the Solar System developed. A May 1983 NASA proposal described SIRTF as a Shuttle-attached mission, with an evolving scientific instrument payload. By the early 1970s, astronomers began to consider the possibility of placing an It would be launched on the Space Shuttle and remain attached to the Shuttle as a Spacelab payload during astronomical observations, after which it would be returned to Earth for refurbishment prior to re-flight.