The Spitzer Space Telescope Mission
Abstract
The Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA's Great Observatory for infrared astronomy, was launched 2003 August 25 and is returning excellent scientific data from its Earth-trailing solar orbit. Spitzer combines the intrinsic sensitivity achievable with a cryogenic telescope in space with the great imaging and spectroscopic power of modern detector arrays to provide the user community with huge gains in capability for exploration of the cosmos in the infrared. The observatory systems are largely performing as expected and the projected cryogenic lifetime is in excess of 5 years. This paper summarizes the on-orbit scientific, technical and operational performance of Spitzer. Subsequent papers in this special issue describe the Spitzer instruments in detail and highlight many of the exciting scientific results obtained during the first six months of the Spitzer mission.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0406223,
title = {The Spitzer Space Telescope Mission},
author = {M. W. Werner and T. L. Roellig and F. J. Low and G. H. Rieke and M. Rieke and W. F. Hoffmann and E. Young and J. R. Houck and B. Brandl and G. G. Fazio and J. L. Hora and R. D. Gehrz and G. Helou and B. T. Soifer and J. Stauffer and J. Keene and P. Eisenhardt and D. Gallagher and T. N. Gautier and W. Irace and C. R. Lawrence and L. Simmons and J. E. Van Cleve and M. Jura and E. L. Wright and D. P. Cruikshank},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0406223},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in the Astrophyscial Journal Supplement Spitzer Special Issue, 22 pages, 3 figures. Higher resolution versions of the figures are available at http://ssc.spitzer.caltech.edu/pubs/journal2004.html