Holiday Card 2024

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

As we look forward to supporting new and on-going missions, including the anticipated launches of SPHEREx and Lunar Trailblazer in 2025, we also look back at some highlights from 2024.

WISE / NEOWISE Mission Concludes

NASA’s NEOWISE telescope ended its 15-year journey on November 1, 2024. The final data release from NEOWISE became available to the astronomy community just two weeks later, encompassing over 26 million images and nearly 200 billion sources detected by the telescope. IPAC was responsible for the full data processing cycle including asteroid candidate detection, as well as archiving and the ongoing distribution of data through IRSA.

The California Nebula is seen in its entirety in this image, covering over 25 square degrees of sky. In this infrared view, the dust clouds underlying the nebula glimmer in green and red.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC

A First View Into Euclid Mission’s Cosmic Atlas

The Euclid mission continues its survey to probe dark energy, and enable studies of many areas of astrophysics through its 15,000 square degree wide area survey. The Euclid NASA Science Center at IPAC (ENSCI) supports US-based investigations using Euclid data.

This image shows an area zoomed in 150 times of the entire 208 giga-pixel mosaic released by ESA on October 15, 2024. On the left are two interacting galaxies (ESO 364-G035 and G036). On the right of the image, is the center of the galaxy cluster Abell 3381.

Image credit: ESA

SPHEREx Prepares to Launch

SPHEREx is an all-sky spectroscopic survey mission conducting 4 all-sky surveys over 2 years, providing the first near-infrared all-sky spectral survey for the astronomical community with a data pipeline operated at IPAC and a data archive hosted by IRSA. The mission PI is Jamie Bock (Caltech).

The SPHEREx observatory is fully assembled and undergoing its final tests for a scheduled launch in late February 2025.

Image credit: BAE Systems

Lunar Trailblazer – Water on the Moon

NASA's Lunar Trailblazer (LTB) will study the form, abundance, and distribution of water on the Moon as well as the lunar water cycle. IPAC is leading the Mission Operation System effort, including planning, scheduling, and sequencing of all science, instrument, and spacecraft activities. LTB is scheduled to launch in early 2025. The LTB mission PI is Bethany Ehlmann (Caltech).

This image shows Lunar Trailblazer undergoing a solar array deployment test at Lockheed Martin near Denver.

Image credit: Lockheed Martin

Roman Mission’s Telescope and Instruments Integrated

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is designed to explore the Universe in search of answers to fundamental questions about dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics. IPAC is partnering with Goddard Space Flight Center and the Space Telescope Science Institute to provide the Science Center functions for Roman.

The Roman telescope, Coronagraph Instrument, and Wide-Field Instrument have been mounted onto the instrument carrier, marking the completion of payload integration. Roman is scheduled to launch no later than May 2027.

Image credit: NASA