On this binary day of 11/11/11, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has reached another numerical milepost, it's 3,000th day of operation!

Needless to say, everyone on the project is delighted that the mission has been so successful, truly beyond our wildest expectations. For instance, before launch nobody thought that Spitzer would be used to study exoplanets, yet now in it's post-cryogenic warm mission phase, helping to characterize newly-discovered exoplanets is one of its most exciting science payoffs. 

Above you can see a photo of some of the Spitzer staff as we celebrated the milestone. The photo above includes a subset of the current Spitzer/IPAC staff standing under the mission clock reading out "3000 days," many of whom have been on the project since before "0"!