WISE Program

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) was an infrared space telescope launched on 14 December 2009 to map the entire sky in four infrared bands. Its primary all-sky astrophysics mission ran through February 2011, discovering and cataloguing stars, galaxies, black holes, brown dwarfs, and other infrared sources before the spacecraft entered hibernation; the later NEOWISE planetary-defense mission is a distinct extension.