386px-spitzer-_telescopioThe Spitzer Space Telescope (formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, SIRTF) is an infrared space observatory. It is the fourth and final of NASA’s Great Observatories.

The planned nominal mission period was to be 2.5 years with a pre-launch expectation that the mission could extend to five or slightly more years until the onboard liquid helium supply was exhausted. As of late 2007, it is expected that this will occur in April 2009. Continued operation of the IRAC detector (the only instrument operable in a warm telescope) is possible, but faces uncertain funding.

In keeping with NASA tradition, the telescope was renamed after successful demonstration of operation, on December 18, 2003. Unlike most telescopes which are named after famous deceased astronomers by a board of scientists, the name for SIRTF was obtained from a contest open to the general public.

The naming contest chose the name of Dr. Lyman Spitzer, Jr., one of the 20th century’s great scientists. Spitzer first proposed placing a large telescope in space in 1946, 11 years before the launch of the world’s first artificial satelite, Sputnik 1.

This presentation is a multipart playlist of about a dozen smaller clips.