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" The eyes of WISE are back in commission. After lying dormant for more than two years, NASA&amp;#039;s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer will emerge from hibernation in September to assist in the asteroid initiative laid out by President Obama. The space agency has dubbed the revival NEOWISE. Despite scuffles in Congress over where NASA would best direct its efforts\u2014lassoing asteroids or more manned missions to the moon\u2014the space agency is moving forward with its plans to identify potentially dangerous near-Earth objects (NEOs), as well as the more ambitious goal of capturing and relocating an asteroid. WISE&amp;#039;s reactivation seems to be the first step in that process as this spacecraft resumes its mission of hunting for new space objects. From January 2010 to February 2011, WISE scanned the entire sky twice over from its perch in orbit, using its infrared telescope hunt asteroids by looking for their heat signatures. The spacecraft produced about 7500 images a day, and in the process discovered 21 comets, 135 NEOs, and more than 34,000 asteroids in our solar system&amp;#039;s main Asteroid Belt. Since it was deactivated at the conclusion of its mission, WISE has been sitting in low Earth orbit with its solar panels facing the sun to provide power but its payload turned off. Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE program principal investigator at NASA&amp;#039;s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said that the reactivation process should be fairly straightforward. &amp;quot;The main thing is that although we have the solar panels pointing toward the sun, the telescope is pointing at the relatively warm earth,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;You don&amp;#039;t want your infrared telescope to be warm.&amp;quot; An infrared telescope that is running hot could lead to inaccurate readings and images. NASA will refocus WISE&amp;#039;s telescope on deep space, which will begin to radiate heat away from the spacecraft. &amp;quot;After three to four months, it&amp;#039;ll be cool enough to make images again without being blinded by our own heat,&amp;quot; Mainzer says. WISE&amp;#039;s mission will be once again to find new NEOs, and to collect data on size, albedo (light reflectivity), and thermal properties of about 2000 other objects over the course of three years. Anything within 28 million miles of Earth&amp;#039;s path around the sun is fair game. The information WISE gathers will be sent to the International Astronomical Union&amp;#039;s Minor Planet Center for cataloging. WISE will also keep its infrared eye out for asteroids that could be captured and relocated into a possible orbit around the moon for studying, should NASA&amp;#039;s plan become reality. NASA even came up with this nifty video simulation to show what it could be like when astronauts dock with a corralled asteroid to take samples:      Could it really happen? While NASA fights for the funding for future ambitious missions, it certainly helps the agency&amp;#039;s case to be able to reuse existing tech. When former NASA astronaut and PM contributor Tom Jones covered the asteroid retrieval mission, he wrote that it &amp;quot;uses existing technology or tech that is within reach in the next decade,&amp;quot; and WISE fits the bill. &amp;quot;Reactivating WISE is an excellent example of how we are leveraging existing capabilities across the agency to achieve our goal,&amp;quot; John Grunsfeld, NASA&amp;#039;s associate administrator for science, said in a press release. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/telescopes/a9299/wise-wakes-up-to-assist-an-asteroid-redirect-mission-15841324/>