Aging space telescope’s service comes to end

CAPE CANAVERAL — NASA is pulling the plug on one of its great observatories — the Spitzer Space Telescope — after 16 years of scanning the universe with infrared eyes.

The end came Thursday when ground controllers put the aging spacecraft into permanent hibernation.

For years, Spitzer peered through dusty clouds at untold stars and galaxies, uncovered a huge, nearly invisible ring around Saturn, and helped discover seven Earth-size planets around a nearby star.

Spitzer’s last observation was expected Wednesday.

Altogether, Spitzer observed 800,000 celestial targets and churned out more than 36 million raw images as part of the $1.4 billion mission.

An estimated 4,000 scientists around the world took part in the observations and published nearly 9,000 studies, according to NASA.

“You have to be proud when you look back and say, ‘Look at the team that’s operating Spitzer, look at the team that’s contributing to having all of this great science,’ ” said project manager Joseph Hunt.

Designed to last 2.5 years to 5 years, the telescope got increasingly difficult to operate as it drifted farther behind Earth, NASA said. It currently trails Earth by 165 million miles, while orbiting the sun.

Spitzer will continue to fall even farther behind Earth, posing no threat to another spacecraft or anything else, officials said.

“Although it would be great to be able to operate all of our telescopes forever, this is not possible,” NASA’s astrophysics director Paul Hertz said in an email.

It had been costing NASA $12 million a year lately to keep Spitzer going. Hertz said with “no guarantee” Spitzer would last until the launch of a more elaborate infrared observatory, the decision was made to shut it down now.

NASA/JPL-CALTECH/UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN The Spitzer Space Telescope, launched in 2003, used infrared instruments to sense heat coming off celestial objects.