NEOWISE 2021 Data Release Available March 24, 2021

The Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) and IPAC at the California Institute of Technology announce the NEOWISE 2021 Data Release.

The 2021 Data Release includes all data acquired during the seventh year of the NEOWISE Reactivation mission (Mainzer et al. 2014, ApJ, 792, 30), 13 December 2019 to 13 December 2020.  These data are combined with the Year 1-6 NEOWISE data into a single archive that contains approximately 17.8 million sets of 3.4 and 4.6 micron images and a database of over 133 billion source detections extracted from those images. 

NEOWISE scanned the sky nearly fourteen complete times during the first seven years of survey operations, with approximately six months between survey passes.  With twelve or more independent 3.4 and 4.6 micron exposures made on each point of the sky during each survey epoch, the NEOWISE archive is a time-domain resource for extracting multiple, independent thermal flux and position measurements of solar system small bodies, as well as background galactic and extragalactic sources.

A quick guide to the NEOWISE data release, data access instructions and supporting documentation is available at  http://wise2.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/release/neowise/.

Access to the NEOWISE data products is available via the on-line and API services of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) at https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu.

NEOWISE is a joint project of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology and the University of Arizona, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Planetary Science Division.