A new NASA infrared observatory designed to see objects either too cold to cast their own light or obscured by interstellar dust was launched early today from Cape Canaveral Air Force station.
The $700 million satellite is being carried by a Boeing Delta II rocket.
The Space Infra Red Telescope Facility (SIRTF) will look into the dark, cold corners of the universe, making itself sensitive to the faintest heat signatures by cooling its own instruments to just a degree or two above absolute zero.
SIRTF is the last of NASA's so-called Great Observatories. When combined with the Hubble Space Telescope, which sees in the visible light spectrum, and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, astronomers will get their most complete view yet of matter and energy near the edge of the known universe.
NASA scientists say that when all three telescopes peer deeply into space, the Chandra will see objects that are millions of degrees in temperature; the Hubble, objects that are thousands of degrees; and SIRTF, those that are hundreds of degrees.
SIRTF also has a job closer to home. Scientists know little about a wide belt of icy objects that circle the sun beyond the orbit of Pluto. This area, known as the Kuiper Belt, sometimes sends one of its ice balls into the inner solar system, where it becomes a comet when heated by the sun.
With SIRTF, NASA for the first time has put an observatory into an earth-trailing orbit around the sun so that the planet's radiation will not interfere with its observations.