NASA is shutting down its Spitzer space telescope permanently on January 30, 2020, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has said.

The telescope will be switched off nearly 16 years after exploring the cosmos in infrared light. The Spitzer space telescope will have operated for more than 11 years by then.

What is the Spitzer space telescope?

Spitzer is a small transformational observatory managed and operated by JPL, which captures infrared light.

It discovered several oldest galaxies in the universe. It revealed a new ring around Saturn, discovered most distant black holes, found evidence of several rocky collisions in the solar systems, detected the most remote planets — located about 13,000 light-years away from Earth, and spotted several asteroids, among others.