Despite its small size -- you could fit the telescope under your arm like a large purse -- and short mission, WISE has already scanned the whole sky one and a half times. As of yesterday, it had observed 153,726 solar system objects, Amanda Mainzer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported at the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences meeting.

WISE has also discovered 19 new comets and more than 33,500 new asteroids, including 120 that swoop relatively close to Earth. There are millions of objects still lurking in the data, many of which have never been seen before. Even without the life extension, WISE's data pile will keep astronomers busy for decades.

"We're pretty pleased with that, for the little mission that could," Mainzer said.

Mainzer hinted that we should see some new astrophysics results from WISE pretty soon. Still, we'll miss getting new images of swoopy swirls of warm gas and dust, invisible to human eyes. Here's a retrospective of our 10 favorite WISE images of deep space.

Above: WISE penetrated curtains of dust that block visible light to capture this hidden star-forming region in the constellation Cepheus. The more formal name for the central portion of this feature is IRAS 22298+6505. This image was just released on September 29.

Authors: Lisa Grossman

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