This artist's concept depicts NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in space much as it would appear at the end of its mission on January 30, 2020. The backdrop depicts the sky in infrared light much as Spitzer would have seen it early in its mission. On this date, Spitzer is 1.77 times as far away from the Earth as the Earth is from the sun. Since launch, Spitzer has orbited our sun much as the Earth does, though taking slightly longer to complete a revolution. Over time it will continue to drift farther away from us until it eventually is on the opposite side of the sun. Spitzer has spent over 16 years helping astronomers explore the infrared universe. Its collected data archives will continue to be a valuable resource for decades to come, and will be instrumental in helping astronomers effectively utilize future NASA missions like the James Web Space Telescope (JWST) and the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).

This artist's concept depicts NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in space much as it would appear to an observer at the end of its mission on January 30, 2020. On this date, Spitzer is 1.77 times as far away from the Earth as the Earth is from the sun. Since launch, Spitzer has orbited our sun much as the Earth does, though taking slightly longer to complete a revolution. Over time it will continue to drift farther away from us until it eventually is on the opposite side of the sun. Spitzer has spent over 16 years helping astronomers explore the infrared universe. Its collected data archives will continue to be a valuable resource for decades to come, and will be instrumental in helping astronomers effectively utilize future NASA missions like the James Web Space Telescope (JWST) and the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).

This artist's concept depicts NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in space much as it would appear at the end of its mission on January 30, 2020. The backdrop depicts the sky in infrared light much as Spitzer would have seen it early in its mission. On this date, Spitzer is 1.77 times as far away from the Earth as the Earth is from the sun. Since launch, Spitzer has orbited our sun much as the Earth does, though taking slightly longer to complete a revolution. Over time it will continue to drift farther away from us until it eventually is on the opposite side of the sun. Spitzer has spent over 16 years helping astronomers explore the infrared universe. Its collected data archives will continue to be a valuable resource for decades to come, and will be instrumental in helping astronomers effectively utilize future NASA missions like the James Web Space Telescope (JWST) and the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).

This artist's concept depicts NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in space much as it would appear to an observer at the end of its mission on January 30, 2020. On this date, Spitzer is 1.77 times as far away from the Earth as the Earth is from the sun. Since launch, Spitzer has orbited our sun much as the Earth does, though taking slightly longer to complete a revolution. Over time it will continue to drift farther away from us until it eventually is on the opposite side of the sun. Spitzer has spent over 16 years helping astronomers explore the infrared universe. Its collected data archives will continue to be a valuable resource for decades to come, and will be instrumental in helping astronomers effectively utilize future NASA missions like the James Web Space Telescope (JWST) and the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).

A poster celebrating Spitzer Final Voyage. On January 30th 2020, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope will complete its mission. The Spitzer Final Voyage web page will tell its story, showcase new science and highlight its most outstanding achievements during the past 16 years in space. http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/final-voyage

This artist's concept shows NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Spitzer begins its "Beyond" mission phase on Oct. 1, 2016. Spitzer is depicted in the orientation it assumes to establish communications with ground stations. Spitzer is over 130 million miles (210 million kilometers) away from Earth, or about 1.5 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. The selected research proposals for Spitzer's Beyond phase include a variety of objects that the mission was not originally planned to address -- such as galaxies in the early universe, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way and exoplanets. Spitzer faces increasing challenges and risks in its Beyond phase. To enable this riskier mode of operations, the mission team will have to override some autonomous safety systems. Mission engineers are hard at work preparing for these new challenges.

13 years into its mission of discovery, NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope faces increasing challenges as it enters the Beyond phase of its mission. This diagram shows how the different phases of Spitzers mission relate to its location relative to Earth over time. Launched into an Earth-trailing orbit, Spitzer orbits the sun similarly to Earth. Because of its slightly larger orbit, Spitzer takes more than a year to circle the sun, causing it to drift further away from the Earth over time. Initially Spitzer, was cooled cryogenically with liquid hydrogen, allowing its instruments to reach temperatures as low as 5.5 degrees Kelvin (-450 degrees Fahrenheit). This allowed all three of its science instruments, IRAC, MIPS, and IRS, to operate at peak efficiency. Once the cryogen was depleted on May 15, 2009, Spitzer began its so-called Warm Mission. This was possible due to Spitzers clever engineering design to enable passive cooling that still maintains a telescope temperature of 27 Kelvin (-411 Fahrenheit). While significantly warmer than its initial state, it still enables its IRAC instrument to operate two channels at full efficiency. As Spitzers distance from the Earth continues to increase along its orbit, it operates outside the design limits set for it at the beginning of its mission. This new phase has been dubbed Beyond as Spitzer faces new engineering challenges and risks. Chief among them are the increasing tilt required to point its primary antenna at Earth for communications, resulting in reduced power to the solar panels and additional stress to the batteries. Spitzer's Beyond mission phase will last until the commissioning phase of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, currently planned to launch in October 2018.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has taken on a new role for asteroid-hunting astronomers. A new software tool lets astronomers quickly comb through existing datasets to recover detections of newly-discovered asteroids from its 10+ year archive of observations. This "precovery" process extrapolates the path of a known asteroid back in time and checks to see whether at some point it may have serendipitously appeared in any of Spitzer's previous observations. Making dense archives such as Spitzer's easily accessible should add to the wealth of small Solar System body information obtained by asteroid-hunting missions like NEOWISE. For instance, observations of objects at varying locations in their orbits, where sunlight glints off them at distinct angles like the phases of the Moon, can reveal characteristics about their shapes and textures. Additionally, seeing an object at different points in time also lends a hand in calculating its trajectory through space.

Over its ten years in space, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has evolved into a premier tool for studying exoplanets. The engineers and scientists behind Spitzer did not have this goal in mind when they designed the observatory back in the 1990s. But thanks to its extraordinary stability, and a series of engineering reworks after launch, Spitzer now has observational powers far beyond its original limits and expectations. This artist's concept shows Spitzer surrounded by examples of exoplanets the telescope has examined.

A poster created for the celebration of the 5th anniversary of the launch of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.

A Delta II rocket, initially intended to launch the Spitzer Space Telescope on April 18, 2003. However, due to additional engineering tests that were needed on the rocket, the launch was delayed and the rocket was instead used to launch a Mars mission. Spitzer launched on a different rocket on August 25, 2003.

Screen grab from an infrared video of the launch of the Spitzer Space Telescope on August 25, 2003

The Spitzer Space Telescope was launched on a Delta II rocket on August 25, 2003 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Screen grab from an infrared video of the launch of the Spitzer Space Telescope on August 25, 2003

The Spitzer Space Telescope was launched on August 25, 2003 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The Spitzer Space Telescope was launched on a Delta II rocket on August 25, 2003 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The Spitzer Space Telescope was launched on a Delta II rocket on August 25, 2003 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Screen grab from an infrared video of the launch of the Spitzer Space Telescope on August 25, 2003

Screen grab from an infrared video of the launch of the Spitzer Space Telescope on August 25, 2003

Screen grab from an infrared video of the launch of the Spitzer Space Telescope on August 25, 2003

The Spitzer Space Telescope was launched on a Delta II rocket on August 25, 2003 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Screen grab from an infrared video of the launch of the Spitzer Space Telescope on August 25, 2003

Screen grab from an infrared video of the launch of the Spitzer Space Telescope on August 25, 2003

The Spitzer Space Telescope was launched on a Delta II rocket on August 25, 2003 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Screen grab from an infrared video of the launch of the Spitzer Space Telescope on August 25, 2003

Screen grab from an infrared video of the launch of the Spitzer Space Telescope on August 25, 2003

The gantry on the Delta II rocket that launched the Spitzer Space Telescope is rolled back on August 24, 2003, the day before the launch.

The gantry on the Delta II rocket that launched the Spitzer Space Telescope is rolled back on August 24, 2003, the day before the launch.

Seen the day before it was launched, the Delta II rocket that launched the Spitzer Space Telescope in visible and infrared light.

The rocked that launched the Spitzer Space Telescope, seen here on August 24, 2003, the day before the launch.