Neowise is a near-Earth object wide-field survey telescope. It is currently the largest and most sensitive infrared space telescope in the world. Neowise is a joint project of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology. The telescope was launched on December 14, 2009, aboard an unmanned Delta II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The primary goal of the Neowise mission is to discover and characterize asteroids and comets that approach the Sun, including those that could potentially pose a threat to Earth. In addition, Neowise is also searching for brown dwarfs, protoplanetary disks, and other solar system bodies. To date, Neowise has discovered more than 1,000 asteroids and comets, including more than 30 that are classified as potentially hazardous objects (PHOs).
In September 2013, it was announced that data from the NEOWISE mission had been used to discover four previously unknown Trojan asteroids orbiting Jupiter. These discoveries increased the known population of Jupiter Trojans by nearly 20%.
On March 15, 2014, NASA announced that NEOWISE had observed comet ISON during its close approaches to Mars and Earth in 2013. Based on these observations, scientists determined that ISON likely disintegrated when it made its closest approach to the Sun on November 28, 2013.