WIRE Wide-Field Infrared Explorer 3D Model

WIRE, the Wide-Field Infrared Explorer, a small NASA telescope launched in 1999 to study how galaxies change. It lost its frozen hydrogen coolant soon after launch and could not carry out that survey, so it was redirected to monitor bright stars. The model shows the white cryostat with its angled sunshade and pipework, the eight-sided spacecraft bus and four lilac solar panels.

Technical details: about 35,000 polygons and 106,000 vertices, with 35 colour materials and no image textures. That is light enough for real-time and web use. It is scaled to 5 metres for AiZity's catalogue scale.

The download includes GLB for web viewers and three.js, FBX for Unity, Unreal Engine and Maya, OBJ as a widely supported mesh, and BLEND for Blender. AiZity cleaned up the original (centred, grounded and renamed the parts) and converted it to these formats.

Good for infrared astronomy lessons, telescope design explainers, small explorer mission displays and star observation animations.

License: Public domain, made by NASA/Christopher R. Meaney (a U.S. government work). Free for personal and commercial use; please credit NASA. NASA logos and insignia are not included, and use must not suggest NASA endorsement.