NASA Spitzer Space Telescope Celebrates 10 Years of Fantastic Images

For ten years, the Spitzer space telescope has taken fantastic images of our universe, studying comets and asteroids as it revealed more about our solar system than ever before. Now, NASA is celebrating this decade of service as the telescope continues to illuminate the dark side of the cosmos with its infrared eyes. 

Spitzer's infrared vision is particularly useful when studying the universe. This capability lets the instrument see things that other telescopes cannot.  For example, the telescope has studied the comet Tempel 1, which was hit by NASA's Deep Impact mission in 2005. Spitzer showed that the composition of the comet resembled that of solar systems far beyond our own. In addition to examining comets, the telescope has also discovered the largest of Saturn's many rings.

Yet this telescope isn't only limited to past discoveries. Moving into its second decade of use, scientists plan to utilize Spitzer to observe potential candidates for NASA's asteroid capture mission.

"President Obama's goal of visiting and asteroid by 2025 combines NASA's diverse talents in a unified endeavor," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science in Washington, in a news release. "Using Spitzer to help us characterize asteroids and potential targets for an asteroid mission advances both science and exploration."

In fact, Spitzer will attempt infrared observations of a small near-Earth asteroid named 2009 DB in October. Hopefully, the telescope will be able to better determine its size in order to see whether or not it's a candidate for the asteroid capture mission.

Spitzer is certainly continuing its mission and has astounded scientists with its abilities over the years. As it continues to produce spectacular images and make new findings, researchers are looking forward to the future.

"I always knew Spitzer would work, but I had no idea that it would be as productive, exciting and long-lived as it has been," said Michael Werner, Spitzer project scientist, in a news release. "The spectacular images that it continues to return, and its cutting-edge science, goes far beyond anything we could have imagined when we started on this journey more than 30 years ago."

Want to see more Spitzer images? Check them out here.