WISE, NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, is scheduled to be launched aboard a Delta II rocket on December 9, 2009 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Artist's conception: Ball/NASA/JPL-Caltech After launch, WISE will scan the entire sky in infrared light with a sensitivity hundreds of times greater than ever before, picking up the glow of hundreds of millions of objects and producing millions of images. The mission will uncover objects never seen before, including the coolest stars, the universe's most luminous galaxies and some of the darkest near-Earth asteroids and comets.