That's amazing! The best discoveries, inventions and surprises

Asteroid telescope's final images revealed

- 

The NEOWISE space telescope spent 10 years studying asteroids and comets.

The final photos from the NEOWISE mission have been released – and the collection includes some truly stunning images. The space telescope, which orbited Earth at an altitude slightly higher (further away) than the International Space Station, searched for near-Earth objects (NEO). A near-Earth object is an asteroid or comet that passes close to Earth’s orbit. The mission’s purpose was to help scientists learn more about asteroids that could smash into the planet, with the aim of understanding how to stop such an impact. In 2022, another NASA mission called DART managed to deflect an asteroid by crashing a spacecraft into its small moon. This was another huge achievement.