On-orbit performance of the Spitzer Space Telescope: science meets engineering

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Abstract
The Spitzer Space Telescope, a long-lived observatory operating outside the thermal and ionizing radiation environment of Earth orbit that makes use of both modern integrating infrared arrays and radiative cooling, serves as a technical pathfinder for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and other future astrophysics missions. Rather than describe the entire Spitzer system design and performance in detail as found in Refs. 1 and 2, we concentrate our discussion of the on-orbit performance in areas in which we feel that the Spitzer experience most uniquely pertains to future missions. These are detailed in the following sections.
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