image creditThe Spitzer Space Telescope is an infrared space observatory launched on August 25, 2003. The telescope has studied comets and asteroids, it has helped to detect far-flung galaxies, and it even discovered soccer-ball-shaped carbon spheres called buckyballs.
It was the first to detect light coming from a planet outside our solar system, and discovered the largest of Saturn's many rings. Even though it ran out of the helium coolant needed to use its far-infrared detectors in 2009, two detectors have continued to provide striking images of the Universe.
