NASA has decommissioned the Spitzer Space Telescope, one of its greatest observatories which has studied the universe by detecting cosmic infrared radiation for more than 16 years.

Launched in 2003, Spitzer Space Telescope was one of NASA's four Great Observatories. Spitzer along with the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory constituted NASA's Great Observatory programme.

In 2016, NASA made a decision to close the Spitzer mission in 2018 in anticipation of the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). As the launch of the JWST got postponed, the Spitzer mission was granted it's fifth and final extension, which ended on Januray 30th 2020.

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