NEOWISE Asteroid Hunter Ends Mission in Fiery Reentry

NASA's NEOWISE spacecraft, originally launched as WISE in 2009, has ended its mission by burning up in Earth's atmosphere. The spacecraft, which surveyed 3,000 near-Earth objects, was repurposed in 2013 to focus on asteroid detection after its initial mission of observing the universe in infrared wavelengths. NEOWISE's demise was due to the solar maximum, which expanded Earth's atmosphere, causing the spacecraft to descend without propulsion. NASA plans to launch a successor, the NEO Surveyor, in 2027 to continue asteroid detection.