'Celebration With Little Bit Of Sad Undercurrent': Remembering The Now-Retired Spitzer Space Telescope
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NASA/JPL-Caltech
In this artist's rendering of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in space, the background is shown in infrared light.
The Spitzer Infrared Space Telescope went dark late last month, as NASA switched it off and retired it.
The Spitzer telescope was part of NASA’s "Great Observatories" fleet, along with the Hubble Space Telescope and others.
George Rieke worked closely on Spitzer; he’s Regents Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona and joined The Show to talk about the now-retired telescope. Reike began by explaining Spitzer’s original goal and how well it did.