The Wide-field Infrared Explorer (WIRE) was a small satellite carrying a cryogenically cooled infrared telescope designed to study starburst galaxies -- vast clouds of molecular gas cradling the sites of newborn stars. Developed under NASA's Small Explorer Program, WIRE was intended to have a four-month primary mission.
WIRE was launched on a three-stage Pegasus XL vehicle released from an L-1011 aircraft over the Pacific Ocean after takeoff from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. The satellite was placed in orbit around Earth at an altitude of 540 kilometers (about 335 miles). Due to an equipment malfunction, the telescope's coolant was rapidly depleted shortly after launch, leaving it unusable for its original science objective.
Since then, WIRE's onboard star tracker has been used for two entirely different purposes: astroseismology and planet-finding. The astroseismology program is intended to measure oscillations in nearby stars to probe their structure. The planet-finding program searches for changes in brightness of stars caused by any large planets passing between the star and WIRE.
The WIRE spacecraft was designed and built by the Small Explorer project team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The infrared telescope was built for JPL by the Space Dynamics Laboratory of Utah State University in Logan, Utah.
Mass: 250 kilograms (550 pounds)
Science instrument: 30-centimeter-diameter (12-inch) infrared telescope
Launch: May 4, 1999
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+ Mission home page
+ Infrared Processing and Analysis Center
