• DOI:10.1086/422992
• Corpus ID: 119379934

The Spitzer Space Telescope Mission

@article{Werner2004TheSS,
  title={The Spitzer Space Telescope Mission},
  author={Michael W. Werner and Thomas L. Roellig and Frank James Low and George H. Rieke and Marcia J. Rieke and William F. Hoffmann and Erick T. Young and James R. Houck and Bernhard Brandl and Giovanni G. Fazio and Joseph L. Hora and Robert D. Gehrz and George Helou and B. T. Soifer and John R. Stauffer and Jocelyn Keene and Peter Eisenhardt and David B. Gallagher and Thomas N. Gautier and William R. Irace and Charles R. Lawrence and Larry L. Simmons and Jeffery E. Van Cleve and M. Jura and Edward L. Wright and Dale P. Cruikshank},
  journal={The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series},
  year={2004},
  volume={154},
  pages={1 - 9}
}

• M. Werner, T. Roellig, +23 authors D. Cruikshank
• Published 9 June 2004
• Physics
• The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series

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 6 months of the Spitzer mission.