The Spitzer Space Telescope is one of NASA’s Great Observatories, designed to observe the universe in infrared light. Launched in 2003 with an expected lifetime of five years, Spitzer has succeeded beyond our wildest expectations. This talk will cover engineering feats and technical challenges, as well as recent science highlights. These include science Spitzer was not designed to do, such as the discovery and characterization of seven rocky, potentially habitable planets in the nearby TRAPPIST-1 system.
Speaker: Sean Carey, Manager of the Spitzer Science Center, Caltech/IPAC