After staring past the dusty veils of the cosmos for 16 years, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope will shut its proverbial eyes Thursday after mission officials at Jet Propulsion Laboratory send the observatory its final command. For instance, while the Hubble Space Telescope was built to scan the skies primarily for visible and ultraviolet light, Spitzer peered into much longer wavelengths of infrared light. Without a telescope like Spitzer, it’s “really hard to figure that out.”AdvertisementSeeing in the infrared also allows astronomers to peer deeper into the universe’s past. And because planets can glow in the infrared, Spitzer could probe the atmospheres of distant worlds. NASA extended the life of the mission while its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, was delayed time and again.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 30, 2020 13:52 UTC