The occasional activity of the Sun disrupts the functioning of radio communications on Earth. NASA’s NEOWISE telescope will soon be impacted by our star.

The sun will cause NEOWISE to burn up in the dense layers of the atmosphere. This is because the increased activity of the star causes the atmosphere to warm and expand, so orbiting objects begin to slow down and fall faster. The space telescope is expected to burn up after 2024 because it can no longer adjust its orbit.

Note that the NEOWISE observatory was originally called WISE (Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer). The infrared telescope was launched into space 14 years ago, and within two years the sensors lost sensitivity due to a lack of cryogenic coolant.

Two years later, WISE was renamed NEOWISE. Since the observatory does not have sufficient sensitivity to observe distant galaxies, scientists decided to use it to search for objects near our planet.

Since NEOWISE’s launch, the sky has been scanned more than two dozen times. As a result, it was possible to detect more than 3,000 objects approaching the Earth. The NEOWISE observatory managed to record more than 200 of them. Source: NASA