This was the little space telescope that could, said Amy Mainzer, an astronomer at the University of California, Los Angeles, and principal investigator for NEOWISE. We were really lucky to get to do this work.
WISE was never meant to study objects closer to Earth, but during its cosmic scans, scientists realized it was pretty good at looking at asteroids, too, Dr. Mainzer said.
On one scan, WISE discovered the first asteroid to share an orbit with Earth, known as a Trojan. It also serendipitously observed a space rock named Dinkinesh, gathering data that came in handy years later on a recent NASA flyby of the object.
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