WEBVTT

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Music.

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Tiffany Nail/NASA's Launch Services Program:  Hello, I'm Tiffany Nail. We're going to take you on a journey of discovery about

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NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, also known as the WISE space telescope. First, here's more about the mission.

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Peter Eisenhardt/WISE Project Scientist: 
There's this basic need that people have to 
know what is out there,

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to understand what the universe is made up 
of.

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George Diller/NASA Public Affairs:  Have you ever wondered how scientists and astronomers find massive stellar creations,

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millions of light years away, in the darkest 
and most isolated areas of the universe?

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The WISE space telescope will be poised to explore the entire sky through infrared eyes,

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searching for dimmer heavenly bodies that populate the space between the brighter planets and the stars.

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Ned Wright/WISE Principal Investigator: So, we're taking pictures in the infrared. And by taking multiple pictures,

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we're going to cover the whole sky. So, we'll get images of the whole sky in the infrared.

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We'll be able to see stars near the sun that haven't been seen yet because they're too cool to radiate optical light.

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George Diller/NASA Public Affairs:  The 
telescope will take an image every

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11 seconds and will photograph nearly 1,500,000 pictures in the first six months alone.

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Ned Wright/WISE Principal Investigator: With all these images we'll stitch them together to

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make an image atlas of the entire sky and figure out,

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you know, what objects are on there and make a catalog. And we expect to see about 300 million objects.

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George Diller/NASA Public Affairs:  Although there are other telescopes with infrared 
capabilities,

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WISE is hundreds of times more sensitive.

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Bill Irace/WISE Project Manager: The last 
time this was done, it was 1983.

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It was a project called IRAS, Infrared Astronomical Satellite.

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It was the first time we actually had barely enough technology to do something like this.

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Ned Wright/WISE Principal Investigator: To 
go back to the previous mission that did an 
all-sky survey,

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they only had 62 pixels total in their camera and

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WISE we have 4 megapixel arrays. So, that's a total of 4 million pixels.

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Bill Irace/WISE Project Manager: Most of us 
when we go to buy a digital camera these 
days,

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we look for megapixels -- 8, 10, 20 -- and IRAS had 62 pixels.

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George Diller/NASA Public Affairs:  
Compared to the massive Hubble Space 
Telescope,

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WISE is smaller and sees a different kind of light from what Hubble can see.

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Peter Eisenhardt/WISE Project Scientist: We have only fairly crude maps of the universe at other wavelengths, particularly in the infrared.

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And so there could be big objects, very 
interesting objects, that are out there, maybe not very far

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away -- that if we could just look in the right place in the infrared, we would find them.

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George Diller/NASA Public Affairs:  With the millions of images WISE will send back to Earth,

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scientists will be able to study the mysterious dark energy that is responsible for the acceleration of the universe.

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WISE will also generate the most complete record of dark objects in the cosmos, like vast dust clouds,

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brown dwarf stars and even large, nearby asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth

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Peter Eisenhardt/WISE Project Scientist: 
Some of them could be very close.

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Some of them might even be closer than any star we know about now.

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And to me, it seems like we ought to know what is out there, what our next door neighbor is.

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And maybe even a star that has planets around it -- so that would be the nearest planetary system beyond the solar system.

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That would be something worth knowing about.

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Ned Wright/WISE Principal Investigator: 
Where WISE is really going to pay off is in

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measuring the infrared radiation from asteroids,

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whereas previous studies of asteroids have primarily been only in reflected light. And some asteroids are really very black ? so,

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blacker than coal -- and so, they do not 
reflect much light at all.

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And so what WISE will be able to do is provide the infrared radiation.

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With the infrared radiation we can determine how big the asteroid is. And with that we can know how big these asteroids are,

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some of which are potentially hazardous to the Earth.

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So, the ones that are in orbits close to the Earth's orbit, you know, could in the future hit us.

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George Diller/NASA Public Affairs:  WISE 
might even find the most luminous galaxies in the universe,

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some so far away that their light has taken 11.5 billion years to reach Earth.

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The WISE telescope is targeted to launch in 
December 2009 aboard a

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United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

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The Delta II will place the spacecraft into a polar orbit several hundred miles above Earth.

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The launch is being directed by NASA's 
Launch Services Program based at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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The LSP team routinely launches from Kennedy and Vandenberg.

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Tiffany Nail/NASA Launch Services 
Program:  Here now with more about the 
WISE mission is Armando Piloto,

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NASA KSC mission manager. Armando, thanks for joining us.

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Armando Piloto/LSP & WISE Mission Manager: It's great to be here, Tiffany.

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Tiffany Nail/NASA Launch Services Program:  Armando, what do you do as a KSC mission manager for WISE?

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Armando Piloto/LSP & WISE Mission 
Manager: Well, Tiffany, as a mission 
manager for WISE,

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I've been responsible for managing the process of integrating a very unique

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spacecraft -- WISE -- to the Delta II rocket. So, in essence, my job is to ensure that the rocket and the spacecraft come together,

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and when they do that they're compatible with each other and that they will both function successfully during flight.

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Tiffany Nail/NASA Launch Services Program:  Were there any challenges for this mission?

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Armando Piloto/LSP & WISE Mission 
Manager: Definitely. There were significant 
challenges,

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like in many other NASA missions that we fly.

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This particular mission, the spacecraft uses a cryostat to keep the telescope at extremely low temperatures in space.

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From a grounds operation perspective, this cryostat before it launches it has to be maintained cool 24/7 at the pad.

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So, the combination of keeping this cryostat cool in conjunction with all of the different rocket activities that are going on,

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created numerous logistic and operational 
challenges for our mission. We found out 
about this early on in the flow,

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so we dedicated a team to go work this problem.

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And the team did a great job, and they have come up with solutions. So we have processes,

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procedures and resources in place to make sure that we can process the cryostat successfully.

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Tiffany Nail/NASA Launch Services Program:  How long did it take to get this mission from concept to launch?

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Armando Piloto/LSP & WISE Mission Manager: We started working on WISE back in the 2003-2004 timeframe.

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Early on we did a lot of different trace studies to find a good launch vehicle solution for 
WISE.

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We looked at a Deep Impact mission, which is a dual mission.

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We looked at different vehicles and we found out that the Delta II was the appropriate match.

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So, it's been about six years, and I know the 
team has done a lot of work to get to this flow

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and we're definitely very excited about the upcoming launch of the WISE mission.

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Tiffany Nail/NASA Launch Services 
Program:  How will WISE be launched and 
why

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are we launching from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California?

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Armando Piloto/LSP & WISE Mission Manager: WISE will be launched aboard a Delta II vehicle out of Vandenberg.

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The reason is because the spacecraft has a requirement to be placed in a polar orbit so that they can conduct their science.

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So from a launch vehicle perspective, we can get spacecraft to the polar orbit more efficiently by launching out of the west coast.

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We could do this mission out of the east coast, but it would take significant more performance from the Delta II vehicle.

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So, that's why we have selected Vandenberg as the launch site.

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Tiffany Nail/NASA Launch Services Program:  Armando, thanks for joining us.

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Armando Piloto/LSP & WISE Mission Manager: Thank you.

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Tiffany Nail/NASA Launch Services 
Program:  For more information about the 
Wide-field

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Infrared Survey Explorer go to www.nasa.gov/WISE.

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Or, you can see the launch as it happens on NASA TV or nasa.gov. For NASA's Launch Services Program,

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I'm Tiffany Nail. Thanks for joining us.

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Music.

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